2^,3,/U 


^  PRINCETON,  N.  J.  ^J 


Presented    byT?<S\f.  S^.TYAcC^Wn^C^Vl  CA^O 

BR    121    .S55    1913 

Simpson,  Patrick  Carnegie, 

1865- 
The  facts  of  life  in 

relation  to  faith 


THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 


V 


FEB   3  1914 


THE 


A 


FACTS    OF   LIFE 


IN  RELATION  TO  FAITH 


BY 

P.  CARNEGIE  SIMPSON,  D.  D 

AUTHOR  OF  '  THE  FACT  OF  CHRIST  ' 


HODDER  &  STOUGHTON 

NEW  YORK 

GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1913,  by 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  &  COMPANY 


©0  mg  Ptfe 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

This  book  is  practically  a  sequel  to  The  Fact 
of  Christ  (published  in  1900),  inasmuch  as  the 
topics  discussed  in  these  chapters — especially 
the  later  chapters — and  many  points  raised  in 
their  treatment  have  been  suggested  mainly 
through  the  correspondence  which  his  earlier 
work  brought  to  the  author  from  varied  quar- 
ters. He  can  hardly  expect  that  this  volume, 
dealing  as  it  does  with  questions  chosen  just  on 
account  of  the  difficulties  they  present  to  many 
perplexed  or  inquiring  minds,  will  receive  the 
measure  of  acceptance  so  kindly  accorded  to  its 
predecessor;  but  if  in  some  degree  it  helps,  it 
will  not  altogether  fail  of  its  end.  The  two 
books  are  written  for  persons  at  somewhat 
different  stages.  The  writer  of  the  very  ad- 
mirable French  translation  of  The  Fact  of 
Christ — Dr.  Maurice  Dusolier — says  in  his 
introduction  that  in  that  volume  is  'a  faith 
gushing  out  of  the  heart'  ('une  foi  jaillie  du 
vii 


viii  PREFATORY  NOTE 

cceur').  The  present  discussions,  it  is  to  be 
feared,  are  more  laboured  in  their  faith.  But 
they  are  written  at  a  spot  further  inland  on 
the  'isthmus'  of  life,  to  which  reference  is  made 
in  the  opening  chapter;  and  travellers  at  that 
stage  will  make  allowance  for  the  difficulty  of 
the  road.  Perhaps  the  march  becomes  lighter 
again  further  on. 

A  few  sentences  in  Chapter  VI.  are  repro- 
duced, with  little  modification,  from  a  contri- 
bution by  the  present  writer  to  a  series  of  lec- 
tures on  the  Creed,  published  in  1904  under 
the  title  of  Questions  of  Faith,  but  now  out  of 
print.  The  stanzas  quoted  opposite  the  begin- 
ning of  Chapter  ill.  are  taken  from  a  small 
book,  privately  printed,  entitled,  'Verses  by 
M.  T.';  they  are  by  Lady  Thomson,  and  the 
book  is  that  mentioned  in  the  Life  of  Lord 
Kelvin,  vol.  i.  p.  533.  For  several  other  quo- 
tations and  references,  the  writer  is  indebted 
to  his  friend  and  late  assistant  the  Rev.  J.  D. 
M.  Rorke,  M.A.,  who  further  has  given  him 
more  than  one  useful  suggestion.        P.  C.  S. 

!9i3- 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTORY 

PAGE 

THE  CREED  OF  EXPERIENCE       ....        3 


I 
THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD 27 

II 
THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN 55 

III 
THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT 89 

IV 

THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST 121 

ix 


x  CONTENTS 

V 

PAGE 

THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM 167 

VI 
THE  VETO  OF  DEATH 207 

VII 
THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY 249 


INTRODUCTORY 
THE  CREED  OF  EXPERIENCE 


'The  gods  we  stand  by  are  the  gods  we  need  and  can 
use,  the  gods  whose  demands  on  us  are  reinforcements 
of  our  demands  on  ourselves  and  on  one  another.  Re- 
ligions have  approved  themselves;  they  ministered  to 
sundry  vital  needs  which  they  found  reigning.  When 
they  violated  other  needs  too  strongly,  or  when  other 
faiths  came  which  served  the  same  needs  better,  the 
first  religions  were  supplanted.'  william  james. 


INTRODUCTORY 

THE  CREED  OF  EXPERIENCE 

A  notable  and  interesting  feature  of  much  of 
modern  thinking  on  the  deeper  problems  of  the 
mind  and  soul  is  that,  more  and  more,  the  truth 
about  these  is  sought  and  tested  not  abstractly, 
but  in  experience.  The  philosophy  of  William 
James  exemplified  this  in  what  he  called  prag- 
matism; and  Dr.  Rudolf  Eucken  has  developed 
it  more  generally  in  what  he  calls  activism. 
These  are  new  words,  but  what  they  essentially 
mean  is  not  so  new.  Just  as  Moliere's  Bour- 
geois Gentilhomme  had  talked  prose  for  forty 
years  without  knowing  he  had  been  literary,  so 
most  men  who,  in  any  real  sense,  are  living  life 
and  who  bring  their  experience  and  their  minds 
together,  are  something  of  pragmatists  or  vital- 
ists  without  any  consciousness  of  being  philo- 
sophical. 

3 


4  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

Here,  indeed,  is  the  third  stage  in  any  intelli- 
gent man's  relation  to  his  faith.  The  first  stage 
is  that  of  childhood,  when  we  believe  what  we 
are  told  to  believe,  whether  it  be  God  or  fairies. 
When  we  outgrow  this — most  of  us  do — we  be- 
gin to  scrutinise  with  our  reason  what  we  have 
been  told,  and  to  refuse  further  credence  to 
what  can  not  satisfy  us  with  rational  proof.  At 
this  point  the  battle  between  faith  and  unbelief 
is  often  sharply  waged.  Yet  it  is  not  here  that 
it  is  finally  lost  or  won.  There  awaits  us  an- 
other transition — less  assertive  than  that  from 
credulity  to  criticism,  but  more  profound  and 
conclusive.  It  is  the  transition  from  criticism 
to  experience,  from  the  mere  dialectics  of  rea- 
soning to  the  actualities  of  life.  Here — for  the 
really  living  man — is  faith's  grand  climacteric. 
And  our  final  creed  is  what  we  have  not  merely 
thought  through,  but  lived  through. 

This  is  a  change  not  easy  to  analyse,  be- 
cause it  is  gradual,  unobtrusive,  and  indeed,  for 
the  most  part,  subconscious.  We  may  fail  not 
merely  to  recognise  it  in  others,  but  even  to 
realise  it  in  ourselves.     It  goes  on,  however, 


INTRODUCTORY  5 

inevitably  within  every  man  who  (as  I  have 
just  put  it)  is  bringing  his  mind  and  his  ex- 
perience together;  and  its  conclusions  are  final 
in  a  sense  in  which  the  opinions  of  the  critical 
reason — confident  as  these  generally  are — can 
not  maintain  themselves  to  be.  As  men  grow 
older  their  actual  and  operative  faith  or  un- 
faith — which  may  be  something  very  different 
from  that  which,  from  custom  or  prudence,  they 
profess — comes  more  and  more  to  be  based  on 
and  limited  by  what  in  their  lives  has  proved 
itself  to  be  real  and  adequate.  This  modifies 
what  even  their  logic  may  think  it  can  prove  or 
disprove.  Indeed,  one  great  part  of  intelli- 
gence in  life  is  just  to  recognise  that,  in  all 
human,  and  especially  spiritual,  affairs,  logic 
must  be  kept  amenable  to  experience.  As  a 
man  goes  on  in  life  he  finds  that  there  is  a 
realm  of  truth  and  good  at  once  larger  and 
surer  than  the  one  of  logical  argument — larger, 
for  there  is  much  he  comes  to  know  in  life 
which  the  merely  critical  reason  could  never 
discover  or  demonstrate,  and  also  surer,  be- 
cause this  kind  of  experience  is  more  a  fact  of 


6  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

his  life  than  is  the  sun.  This  does  not  mean 
any  discrediting  of  reason.  But  it  means  that 
reason,  in  its  full  and  true  sense,  is  not  merely 
an  instrument  of  logical  or  historical  or  critical 
ratiocination.  Reason  in  its  full  and  true  sense 
is  the  intelligent  relation  between  man  and  his 
whole  world.  To  give  it  another  name,  it  is 
not  mere  reasoning,  mere  science,  but  wisdom. 
And  to  this  wisdom,  life  contributes  more  even 
than  logic. 

An  actual  example  of  what  I  mean,  and  one 
from  the  mental  career  of  a  distinguished  man, 
may  be  found  in  the  writings  of  that  sincere 
thinker  and  eminent  biologist,  George  John 
Romanes.  In  early  life  Romanes  published  a 
treatise  entitled  A  Candid  Examination  of 
Theism,  in  which  he  maintained  what  may  be 
described  as  materialistic  or  agnostic  conclu- 
sions. In  a  later  work,  however,  he  greatly 
modified  and  in  part  retracted  these  views,  and 
his  explanation  of  this  change  is  interesting.  It 
was  not  that  he  had  discovered  his  reasoning 
to  have  been  at  fault;  on  the  contrary,  he  says, 
'as  a  matter  of  mere  ratiocination,  I  am  not 


INTRODUCTORY  7 

likely  to  detect  any  serious  flaws.'  But  he 
found  that  his  earlier  book  was  written  with 
what  he  calls  'undue  confidence  in  syllogistic 
conclusions' ;  and  he  confessed  the  modification 
of  his  views  to  be  'due  not  so  much  to  logical 
processes  of  the  intellect'  as  to  the  ripening 
'experience  of  life.'1  Here  is  exactly  the  tran- 
sition of  which  I  am  speaking. 

We  all  make  it  if  we  are  living  life  in  the 
world  at  all.  And  we  must  live  life  in  the 
world.  There  is  no  other  place  for  us  in  which 
to  live  it.  A  man  is  neither  truly  a  saint  nor 
truly  a  philosopher — and  he  may  very  probably 
be  a  prig  or  a  fool  to  boot — who  thinks  this 
world  is  not  the  place  for  him  to  live,  and 
whose  experience  of  life  round  about  him  is 
not  a  great  and  a  welcome  part  of  his  education 
in  truth.  Therefore  our  life,  as  we  live  it, 
should  influence  our  faith,  as  it  influences  every- 
thing else.  Religious  belief  should  become,  if 
not  less  and  less  a  thing  arguable  in  logic,  cer- 
tainly more  and  more  a  thing  tested  in  experi- 
ence.    And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  as  men  grow 

1  Romanes'  Thoughts  on  Religion,  p.  ioo. 
2 


8  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

older  they  care  comparatively  little  for  the  pros 
and  cons  of  mere  apologetic  debate.  Mr. 
Lecky  has  put  it  thus: — 

'Young  men  discuss  religious  questions  simply  as 
questions  of  truth  and  falsehood.  In  later  life  they 
more  frequently  accept  their  creed  as  a  working 
hypothesis  of  life:  as  a  consolation  in  innumerable 
calamities:  as  the  one  supposition  under  which  life 
is  not  a  melancholy  anticlimax :  as  the  indispensable 
sanction  of  moral  obligations:  as  the  gratification 
and  reflection  of  needs,  instincts,  longings  which  are 
placed  in  the  deepest  recesses  of  human  nature:  as 
one  of  the  chief  pillars  on  which  society  rests.' x 

It  is  more  simply  expressed  in  Tolstoy's  master- 
piece, where,  in  a  discussion  about  immortality, 
Prince  Audrey  says:  'Yes,  that's  Herder's 
theory,  but  it 's  not  that,  my  dear  boy,  convinces 
me;  life  and  death  have  convinced  me.'2  So  it 
is  with  all  of  us  who  are  living  life  at  all.  It  is 
'life  and  death'  that  make  us  believers — or  un- 
believers. 

This  is  true,  of  course,  of  many  forms  of 

1  Lecky 's  Map  of  Life,  p.  212. 

2  War  and  Peace,  Pt.  v.  chap.  xii. 


INTRODUCTORY  9 

thought  or  belief.  It  is  true  of  all  aspects  of 
what,  in  contradistinction  from  such  operations 
of  abstract  thought  as  pure  mathematics,  may 
be  called  humane  truth.  It  is  particularly  true 
of  ethical,  spiritual,  and  religious.  In  ethics, 
for  example,  Aristotle's  definition  of  virtue 
recognises  this  amenableness  of  theory  to  prac- 
tical life  when  it  says  virtue  is  to  be  determined 
not  only  'by  reason,'  but  also  'in  the  way  the 
man  of  practical  reason  would  determine  it.'1 
Of  such  a  spiritual  thing  as  love  we  all  say  with 
Browning:  'And  live  be  a  proof  of  this.'2  But 
nowhere  is  this  appeal  to  experience  more  im- 
portant than  in  religion,  and  above  all  in  the 
Christian  religion.  Certainly  any  intelligent 
Christian  faith  should  be  ready  to  meet  the 
challenge  of  the  reason,  and  not  afraid  to  meet 
its  criticisms  on  their  own  ground.  Still,  the 
crucial  evidence  is  found  in  the  experience  of 
the  life  lived  in  fellowship  with  Christ.  The 
man  who  has  this  can  indeed  believe,  and  as 
he  does  he  says  with  St.  Paul:  'I  know' — not 
merely  I  know  about — 'in  whom  I  have  be- 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  ii.  6,  15.  2  By  the  Fireside,  xxxix. 


io  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

lieved.'  He  is  Bernard's  Expertus  potest  cre- 
dere. No  doubt,  all  this  may  be  assumed 
unwarrantably  and  even  falsely.  A  shallow 
man  and,  still  worse,  a  hypocrite  may  profess 
an  experience  which  he  does  not  really  know. 
Men  may  plagiarise  in  religion  as  well  as  in 
literature.  Still,  beyond  all  question,  what  is 
called  Christian  experience  —  in  repentance, 
faith,  prayer,  obedience,  and  the  peace  and  joy 
and  strength  of  a  new  life — is  a  real  document 
humain,  and  it  rightly  gives  an  assurance  which 
nothing  merely  external  can  do.  The  Chris- 
tian's is  essentially  a  creed  of  experience. 

This  has  been  often  said,  and  need  not  here 
be  reiterated  at  length.  Yet — and  here  is  the 
subject  of  these  chapters — is  there  not  another 
side  to  this? 

Experience  is  a  large  word.  If  you  appeal  to 
life  for  confirmation  of  your  faith,  to  life  you 
must  go.  And  you  must  go  to  it  as  a  whole, 
not  to  some  selected  portion  of  it.  You  must 
go  to  it  open-eyed,  wearing  no  theological  or 
ecclesiastical  blinkers  which  shut  off  large  areas 
of  unwelcome  facts,  but  viewing  the  world  as 


INTRODUCTORY  n 

it  is,  and  all  of  it.  Nothing  short  of  this  is 
fully  and  fairly  to  appeal  to  experience.  But 
when  we  do  this,  does  it  not  give  us  pause? 
Does  it  not  chill  rather  than  confirm  our  faith? 
Can  it  be  fairly  said  that  the  facts  of  life — 
not  of  some  secluded  section  of  it  within  the 
cloister  of  the  pious  soul's  experience  but  of 
the  world,  'which  is  the  world  of  all  of  us' — 
plainly  support  the  assertions,  the  assurances, 
the  hopes  and  the  ideals  of  faith?  When  the 
receptive  and  candid  mind  goes  forth  to  all  the 
data  of  history  and  life,  it  is  often  hard  for 
such  faith  to  maintain  its  position.  Yet  this  is 
not  a  going  out  to  what  is  false,  still  less  to 
what  is  sinful.  It  is  a  going  out  simply  to  the 
complete  world  of  experience,  outward  and  in- 
ward. There,  to  many  a  man,  much  of  what 
Christian  thought  and  feeling  have  found  and 
nurtured  in  their  concentration  upon  the  area 
of  religion  becomes  remote,  foreign,  out  of 
place.  It  is  like  something  which  we  read 
about  in  the  life,  say,  of  Tibet.  It  may  be  true 
in  its  world,  but  it  seems  hardly  real  in  the 
world.     At  most  it  is  something  which,  as  a 


12  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

modern  play  phrases  it,   'one  meets  with  no- 
where except  in  Judaea.' l 

Here  is  a  problem  for  faith  which  deserves 
far  more  attention  than  the  more  open  assaults 
upon  belief  which  come  from  unbelieving  think- 
ers and  writers.  Such  men  rise  up  periodically, 
and  have  done  so  from  the  days  of  Celsus  on- 
ward. Hardly  any  of  these  attacks  have  long 
survived — though  sometimes  they  have  inter- 
estingly revived — but  they  produce  a  sensation 
and,  perhaps,  a  panic  for  a  while.  Young  men 
alarm  their  mothers  by  airing  the  latest  ra- 
tionalism, and  worthy  divines  prepare  sermons 
to  refute  it.  After  a  little  it  dies  away,  and 
the  world  waits  for  the  next  clever  man  to 
arise  to  show  it  a  better  faith  than  that  of 
the  apostles.  Christianity  has  had  many  such 
'crises'  of  faith,  and  will  have  many  more.  But 
the  most  real  and  the  permanent  problem  of 
faith  is  not  here.  It  is  not  created  by  some 
clever  critic.  It  arises  out  of  life  itself.  It  is 
that,  as  has  been  already  indicated,  the  facts 
of  life,  looked  at  broadly  and  candidly,  seem 

1  Maeterlinck's  Mary  Magdalene,  Act  i.  sc.  iv. 


INTRODUCTORY  13 

to  discredit  faith  or,  at  least,  do  not  support 
its  message.  The  gospel,  in  a  word,  does  not 
echo  in  the  actual  world.  This  is  a  genuine 
problem.  It  is,  in  a  peculiar  degree,  the  danger 
which  assails  faith  in  what  is  really  its  most 
trying  period — that  of  mid-life.  Preachers 
and  others  often  speak  as  if  youth  were  the 
dangerous  time  of  life.  This  is  a  mistake. 
There  is  a  saving  idealism  about  even  the 
errors  of  youth — except  in  abnormal  cases — 
which  preserves  it  from  the  worst  dangers. 
The  'middle  watch'  is  the  most  trying  time. 
To  change  the  figure,  human  life  is  an  isthmus 
between  two  eternal  seas.  It  is  when  we  are 
in  the  valley  midway,  'inland  far,' — having  lost 

'sight  of  that  immortal  sea 
Which  brought  us  hither,'1 

and  not  yet  having  borne  in  upon  our  ears  the 
solemn  boom  of  the  great  ocean  whither  we 
go — that  faith,  and  character  too,  are  most 
surely  tested.  And  one  great  element  in  this 
trial  is  just,   as  I  have  been  saying,  that  all 

1  Wordsworth,  Ode  on  the  Intimation  of  Immortality,  ix. 


i4  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

around  us  seems  to  respond  so  little  to  the 
message  of  the  gospel  with  which  the  whole 
world  seemed  to  be  so  thrillingly  alive  as  we 
first  stepped  out  upon  the  way  of  life. 

Now  it  will  at  once  be  said  by  at  least  some 
readers  that  all  this  arises  from  a  poor  religious 
life  lived  at  a  low  and  Sadducean  temperature. 
It  is  easy  to  say  that.  And  it  has  in  it  the 
reminder  of  a  grave  truth.  Nothing  is  more 
true  than  that  a  man's  life  reacts  on  his  belief. 
In  particular,  a  man  who  is  deliberately  and 
habitually  so  living  that  he  does  not  want  the 
law  and  the  gospel  of  Christ  to  become  too 
plain  and  authoritative  to  him,  will  succeed  in 
making  much  of  faith  at  least  disputable  and 
so  dismissable.  He  may  talk  much  about  his 
'honest  doubts,'  but  the  root  of  that  man's 
unfaith  is  his  dishonest  sins.  In  all  wilful 
sinning  there  is  an  element  of  the  morally  dis- 
honest. Sin  is  never  the  result  of  really  faith- 
ful thinking  and  faithful  living.  And  this 
affects  all  our  belief.  Certainly  it  is  not  pos- 
sible for  one  who  is  deliberately  living  a  bad 
life,  and  means  to  go  on  living  it,  to  be  even 


INTRODUCTORY  15 

intellectually  sincere  towards  the  truth  that  is  in 
Jesus  Christ.  All  this  is  gravely  true,  and  we 
cannot  be  too  gravely  reminded  of  it.  At  the 
same  time,  it  were,  I  think,  quite  an  unjust 
thing  to  ascribe  the  problem  for  faith  of  which 
I  have  been  speaking  only  to  sinful  or  Saddu- 
cean  character  and  life.  It  may  arise,  and 
often  does  arise,  from  very  different  reasons, 
of  which  I  shall  mention  two.  It  may  arise 
from  not  any  kind  of  dishonesty,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  the  very  desire  to  know  just  the  truth 
of  things.  Or  it  may  arise  from  not  any 
Sadducean  indifference,  but,  on  the  contrary,  a 
deepening  earnestness  about  the  questions  of 
faith,  and  the  feeling  that  these  grow  more 
difficult  as  they  grow  more  real.  Let  us  look 
for  a  moment  at  each  of  these. 

I  say  first,  the  problem  may  arise  from  the 
desire  to  know  the  truth.  The  one  thing  a  man 
of  character  and  seriousness  wants  in  religion 
is  just  the  truth.  Here  again  there  is  a  differ- 
ence as  compared  with  youth.  When  youth 
first  comes  in  contact  with  the  world,  what  it 
desires  and  even  needs  is  less  the  actual  than 


1 6  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

the  ideal.  Our  mother,  Nature,  means  that 
we  should  be  educated  first  by  the  generous 
illusions  of  life,  and  a  premature  wisdom  about 
life's  realities  is  alien  to  her  wise  and  gentle 
leading.  This  applies  to  many  things  and, 
among  them,  even  to  faith.  When  we  are 
young,  then,  Browning's  way  of  putting  Chris- 
tianity is  the  right  way:  'Has  it  your  vote  to 
be  true?'1  But  with  the  grown  man  it  is  differ- 
ent. He  will  vote  only  for  what  experience 
shows  to  be  solid.  He  is  interested  not  in  a 
mere  ideal  but  in  the  actual.  The  most  helpful 
thing  that  can  be  said  or  done  to  many  a  youth 
of  twenty  is  just  to  slap  him  on  the  back  and 
tell  him  life  is  a  splendid  thing;  but  you  can 
neither  do  the  one  nor  merely  say  the  other 
to  a  man  of  forty,  whose  experience  has  told 
him  a  chequered  tale  not  easily  harmonised 
with  the  simpler  ideals  of  faith.  This  some- 
times develops  in  men  a  hardened  and  worldly 
cynicism — a  deadly  mental  and  moral  sin  which 
has  the  virtue  neither  of  youth  nor  of  age. 

1  I  recall  how  effectively  Professor  Henry  Drummond  used 
to  ask  this  in  his  famous  addresses  to  students. 


INTRODUCTORY  17 

But,  on  its  good  side,  it  develops  rather  the 
temper  which  knows  nothing  is  of  real  use  that 
is  not  really  true.  Goethe  says  that  'error  may 
be  quite  right  so  long  as  we  are  young,  but  we 
must  not  carry  it  on  with  us  into  age,'1  And 
it  is  because  of  what  seems  the  truth  of  the 
actual  facts  of  the  world  and  of  life  that  a 
problem  for  faith  is  raised  in  the  mind  of  so 
many  who  have  got  to  the  stage  of  this  maxim 
and  whom  it  were  most  unjust  to  denounce  as 
either  Sadducean  or  of  dubious  morals.  This 
is  one  reason  why  people  in  middle  life  do 
not  talk  of  religion  as  readily  as  the  young 
or  the  old  do. 

But  further:  faith,  I  said,  becomes  more 
difficult  as  life  grows  more  real.  So  long  as 
a  man's  faith  is  something  still  merely  on  the 
surface  of  his  life — by  which  I  mean  not  that 
it  is  therefore  insincere,  but  that  it  has  not 
yet  had  occasion  to  be  wrought,  through  trial 
and  discipline,  into  the  deeper  parts  of  his 
nature — he  may  believe  facilely.  But  it  is  not 
a  facile  thing  to  believe  when  a  man  is  face 

1  Maximen  und  Reflexionen,  72. 


i8  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

to  face  with  the  real  issues  of  life  and  death. 
Faith  then,  too,  becomes  a  matter  of  life  or 
death  for  the  soul.  There  is  a  whole  world 
of  difference  between  the  question  as  it  presents 
itself  to  the  budding  student  of  philosophy  who 
sits  with  his  books  about  him  and  begins  to 
write  an  essay  on  the  credibility  of  something 
in  the  Christian  faith,  and  to  whom  to  give 
up  this  or  that  is  merely  to  revise  an  opinion; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  question  present- 
ing itself  to  a  man  who  sits  with  his  ruined  life 
about  him  or  his  dearest  lying  cold  in  the  coffin, 
and  to  whom  the  message  of  Christ  is  the  only 
alternative  to  desperation  and  despair.  As  the 
lines  of  Clough — a  man  typical  of  much  that 
has  been  said  in  this  chapter — truly  put  it: — 

1  'Tis  not  the   calm  and   peaceful   breast 
That  sees  or  reads  the  problem  true, 
They  only  know  on  whom  't  has  prest 
Too  hard  to  hope  to  solve  it  too.' 1 

This  is  what  I  mean  when  I  say  that  belief 

becomes  not  easier  as  life  becomes  more  real. 

Thus,  while  admitting  a  grave  element  of 

1  Miscellaneous  Poems:  'In  the  Depths.' 


INTRODUCTORY  19 

truth  in  the  connection  between  unbelief  and 
sinful  or  Sadducean  life,  we  cannot,  I  think, 
accept  this  as  wholly  meeting  our  problem, 
which  I  therefore  restate.  Is  faith  valid  in 
face  of  all  the  facts  of  experience?  Granted 
that  a  case,  even  a  sincere  and  strong  case,  can 
be  made  for  what  is  described  as  the  fact  of 
Christ,  and  for  the  great  intellectual,  moral, 
and  spiritual  meanings  which  it  contains,  yet 
the  thought  will  occur  to  the  experienced  and 
critical  mind  that  this  is  specialisation  and  is  ex- 
posed to  the  dangers  of  specialisation.  There 
are  other  facts  which  must  be  taken  into  ac- 
count. And  just  as  the  scientific  materialist 
should  take  more  account  than  he  usually  does 
of  what  Christ  is,  so  the  Christian  believer 
must  not  fail  to  reckon  with  the  facts  in  nature 
and  in  the  world,  which  are  very  different  from 
and  apparently  alien  to  the  religious  data  on 
which  he  is  apt  so  largely  to  dwell.  In  short, 
the  danger  of  all  specialisation — religious  or 
non-religious — is  to  mistake  the  thing  we  are 
working  at  for  everything;  and  the  cure  for  it 
is  to  remember  that  experience  is  a  unity  and 


20  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

truth  a  seamless  garment,  and  the  only  way 
rightly  to  see  life  is  (in  Matthew  Arnold's 
phrase  on  Sophocles)  to  see  it  steadily  and  see 
it  whole.  It  is  when  they  thus  bring  their  faith 
out  into  life  and  face  to  face  with  all  life's 
facts  that  many  minds  feel  the  shock  of  a  great 
contradiction.  There  are  many  others,  no 
doubt,  who  do  not  feel  it;  perhaps  because  in 
some  cases  they  know  God  too  deeply,  and  in 
others  they  do  not  know  life  deeply  enough. 
Yet  other  minds,  again,  neither  saintly  nor 
shallow,  seem  able,  when  confronted  with 
things  that  withstand  faith,  to  slip  past  them 
as  running  water  by  a  stone  in  its  course,  or  to 
hop  from  a  realm  of  faith  to  a  realm  of  facts 
as  occasion  requires.  But,  as  Plato  says,  phi- 
losophy 'thinks  things  together.'  And,  in  this 
sense,  all  people  are  truly  philosophers  who 
are  really  living  life  and  really  applying  their 
life  to  their  religion  and  their  religion  to  their 
life — especially  the  darker  and  more  difficult 
parts  of  their  experience.  Maxim  Gorky  in 
one  of  his  books  says  that  'every  one  who  has 
a  struggle  to  sustain  in  life'  is  a  philosopher; 


INTRODUCTORY  21 

indeed,  'more  of  a  philosopher  than  Schopen- 
hauer himself,  for  abstract  thought  can  never 
be  cast  into  such  a  correct  and  vivid  plastic 
form  as  that  in  which  is  expressed  the  thought 
born  directly  out  of  suffering.'1  It  is  those 
whose  thoughts  are  born  in  this  fashion  who, 
when  they  bring  the  great  assertions  and  prom- 
ises of  Christian  faith  face  to  face  with  what 
life  has  meant  for  them,  feel  the  shock.  It  is 
not  that  they  adopt  or  profess  positive  un- 
belief; but  faith  seems  to  come  to  a  stop. 
What  such  persons  would  say  is,  I  think,  some- 
thing such  as  this :  'We  do  not — or  at  least  we 
would  not — deny  Christ;  but  it  is  impossible 
to  ask  us  to  deny  the  facts  of  life.  We  even 
desire  a  religious  synthesis  of  the  world,  but 
it  must  be  one  not  of  some  selected  phenomena 
in  it,  but  of  the  world  as  it  actually  is  and — 
so  far  as  we  may  use  the  expression — the 
world  as  a  whole.  We  seek  to  have  life 
illumined  by  faith,  but  it  must  really  be  life 
as  we  experience  it  which  is  so  illumined,  not 
some  mere  section  of  it  seen  under   artificial 

1  Varenka  Olesowa,  i.  si. 


22  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

light.  We  want  to  learn  how  to  live  and  die, 
but  not  in  a  way  which  shuts  its  eyes  to  what 
life  and  death  really  are  for  men.'  In  words 
such  as  these  might  those  of  whom  I  am  think- 
ing speak  for  themselves.  Their  attitude  of 
mind  is  surely  a  most  honest  one.  It  is — at 
least  for  many — not  only  an  honest  but  the 
inevitable  attitude.     Wordsworth  speaks  of 

'this  very  world  which  is  the  world 
Of  all  of  us — the  place  where,  in  the  end, 
We  find  our  happiness,  or  not  at  all.'1 

What  these  lines  say  of  happiness  may  be  said, 
and  not  less  truly,  of  faith.  It  is  in  'this  very 
world,'  with  the  experience  of  it  we  have  in 
our  life,  that  we  must  find  our  faith.  It  is 
here  'or  not  at  all.' 

This  then  is  what  we  shall  discuss  in  the 
following  chapters — namely,  Christian  faith, 
not  as  considered  by  itself,  but  as  standing 
amid  and  apparently  against  the  facts  of  life 
and  of  the  world.  It  is,  of  course,  an  almost 
limitless  subject,  for  the  facts  of  life  and  of 
the  world  are  vast,   and  experience  of  them 

1  French  Revolution. 


INTRODUCTORY  23 

covers  everything.  Therefore  we  can  deal  with 
only  a  few  questions  which  the  general  problem 
raises.  But  this  really  is  no  loss.  I  think  many 
will  agree  that  one  thing  about  life  as  it  goes 
on  is  that  the  questions  in  it  that  really  matter 
are  found,  after  all,  to  be  comparatively  few. 
A  great  many  things  which  used  to  seem  to  us 
to  matter  tremendously  now  are  seen  to  be 
unimportant,  or  about  them  one  is  content  to 
be  agnostic,  as  in  many  things  even  the  Chris- 
tian must  be;  the  real  questions  are  now  more 
real,  but  they  are  few.  If  in  these  pages  we 
can  touch  only  a  few  questions,  I  shall  try  to 
select  those  few  which  are  the  most  real.  We 
need  not  select  them  in  any  too  formal  plan. 
The  most  natural  way  to  begin  is,  I  think,  to 
consider  generally  what  questions  are  raised 
in  the  mind  in  this  connection  when  we  look 
round  the  face  of  the  world;  thereafter  we 
shall  as  far  as  possible  let  each  subject  suggest 
to  us  the  next.  This  is  the  way  in  which  we 
think  about  the  problems  of  life  in  the  actual 
business  of  living,  and  I  hope  one  may  keep 
in  touch  with  the   living  of  life   even   in  the 

writing  of  a  book. 
3 


I 

THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD 


'The  keener  insight  of  the  New  Age  and  a  more 
accurate  acquaintance  with  the  laws  which  govern 
alike  our  human  life  and  Nature,  make  it  quite  clear 
that  neither  in  the  way  of  love  nor  in  that  of  justice 
does  Reality  endorse  our  ethical  demands.  Nature's 
indifference  to  man's  welfare  is  appalling,  yet  un- 
mistakable; and  it  is  becoming  increasingly  plain  that 
every  attempt  to  shape  our  human  world  into  a  king- 
dom of  justice  and  love  proves  lamentably  inadequate 
and  meets  with  restrictions  at  every  turn.' 

RUDOLF    EUCKEN. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD 

The  first  and  most  general  problem  which 
arises  out  of  the  facts  of  experience  to  con- 
front and  seemingly  contradict  faith  is  just  that 
this  world  on  the  face  of  it,  is  such  a  strange 
and  difficult  place  in  which  to  believe  the  gos- 
pel. Nature  and  life  seem  to  tell  a  very  differ- 
ent tale  about  their  Author  than  that  which 
we  are  told  in  church  about  our  Father  in 
heaven. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  prior  question  as  to 
whether  they  tell  of  any  Author  at  all.  But 
life  is  short  and  books  should  not  be  long;  so 
I  must  be  allowed  here  to  postulate  the  exist- 
ence of  God.  The  idea  that  evolution  has 
made  this  postulate  no  longer  tenable  or  neces- 
sary is  now  seen  to  be  an  entire  fallacy.  Not 
many   decades   ago   orthodox   religion  was   in 

27 


28  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

something  of  a  panic  about  this.  Bishops  could 
hardly  go  to  bed  for  fear  of  the  apparition 
(as  somebody's  humorous  pen  put  it)  of  'an 
extraordinarily  intelligent  ape  or  an  unusually 
hairy  man,'  and  divines  could  not  pass  a  chem- 
ist's shop  without  the  apprehensive  thought  of 
some  atheistically  potent  atom  which  might  dis- 
pense with  the  Creator.  Such  alarms  do  not 
now  perturb  the  slumbers  even  of  a  curate 
nor  the  perambulations  of  the  humblest  local 
preacher.  We  all  see  now  that  'God  is  not 
less  God,  nor  the  creative  energy  less  creative, 
because  we  are  led  to  suppose  that  a  lengthy 
instead  of  a  sudden  method  was  employed  in 
the  production  of  the  Cosmos.'1  Evolution, 
that  is  to  say — and  it  is  a  commonplace  to  say 
it — is  a  process,  not  a  cause;  it  is  a  'history,'2 
which  needs  an  Author  as  much  as  does  the 
story  described  in  the  first  chapter  of  the  Book 
of  Genesis.  For  that  this  cosmos  of  reason 
and  beauty  has  been  evolved  through  the 
chances  of  an  infinite  series  of  molecular  vari- 

1  J.  A.  Symonds's  Essays,  Speculative  and  Suggestive,  p.  10. 

2  Huxley's  own  word  for  it. 


THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD      29 

ations  is  exactly  as  credible  as  that  if  a  box 
of  printer's  type  were  shaken  about  in  the  dark 
for  a  very  long  time  there  might  result  a  Ham- 
let or  a  Paradise  Lost.  The  difficulty  for  faith 
about  the  facts  of  this  world  is  not  of  this 
kind — not,  at  any  rate,  with  straight  and  sen- 
sible minds. 

It  is  a  moral  rather  than  a  merely  logical 
problem,  and  may  be  stated  thus.  Here  is 
religion,  professing  to  come  to  us  in  God's 
name  and  telling  us  what  are  the  things  of 
transcendent  importance  in  faith  and  life.  And 
here  is  the  world — God's  world,  surely — which 
seems  utterly  indifferent  to  these  things.  Na- 
ture takes  simply  no  notice  of  the  spiritual  and 
ethical  interests  which,  according  to  religion, 
are  the  supreme  things  in  God  and  for  man. 
It  does  not  seem  to  exist  in  any  connection 
with  them.  Yet  this  is  the  world  in  which  man 
lives,  and  this  nature  he  to  at  least  some  degree 
shares.  There  is  an  interesting  problem  here, 
and  one  which,  in  some  respects,  is  a  very  diffi- 
cult one.  This  chapter  will  merely  touch  on 
its  more  general  aspects;  its  features  of  special 


30  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

difficulty  must  be  treated  more   fully  in  sub- 
sequent chapters. 

It  is  well  to  begin  from  the  beginning,  so  I 
shall  first  state  this  topic  as  it  arises  out  of  the 
mere  existence  of  things  in  the  natural  world. 
This  is  expressed  in  lively  fashion  in  the  fol- 
lowing passage  from  one  of  Walter  Bagehot's 
stimulating  essays: — 

'Every  one  who  has  religious  ideas  must  have 
been  puzzled  by  what  we  may  call  the  irrelevance 
of  creation  to  his  religion.  We  find  ourselves 
lodged  in  a  vast  theatre,  in  which  a  ceaseless  action, 
a  perpetual  shifting  of  scenes,  an  unresting  life,  is 
going  forward;  and  that  life  seems  physical,  im- 
moral, having  no  relation  to  what  our  souls  tell  us 
to  be  great  and  good,  to  what  religion  says  is  the 
design  of  all  things.  Especially  when  we  see  any 
new  objects  or  scenes  or  countries  we  feel  this. 
Look  at  a  great  tropical  plant,  with  large  leaves 
stretching  everywhere,  and  great  stalks  branching 
out  on  all  sides;  with  a  big  beetle  on  a  leaf  and  a 
humming-bird  on  a  branch,  and  an  ugly  lizard  just 
below.  What  has  such  an  object  to  do  with  us, 
with  anything  we  can  conceive  or  hope  or  imagine  ? 
What  could  it  be  created  for,  if  creation  has  a  moral 
end  and  object?  Or  go  into  a  gravel-pit  or  stone- 
quarry;  you  see  there  a  vast  accumulation  of  dull 


THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD      31 

matter,  yellow  or  grey,  and  you  ask,  involuntarily 
and  of  necessity,  why  is  all  this  waste,  and  irrele- 
vant production,  as  it  would  seem,  of  material? 
Can  anything  seem  more  stupid  than  a  big  stone  as 
a  big  stone,  than  gravel  for  gravel's  sake?  What 
is  the  use  of  such  cumbrous,  inexpressive  objects  in 
a  world  where  there  are  minds  to  be  filled,  imagi- 
nations to  be  aroused,  and  souls  to  be  saved?'1 

I  have  quoted  this  at  length  because  it  would 
be  a  pity  to  break  in  on  Bagehot's  vivacious 
sentences;  but  the  problem  it  presents  is  one 
we  need  not  feel  too  gravely.  After  all,  where 
is  this  'irrelevant  world'  of  'inexpressive  ob- 
jects' which  has  nothing  to  do  'with  us'  or  'with 
anything  we  can  conceive  or  hope  or  imagine'  ? 
It  exists  only  in  the  mind  of  the  doctrinaire. 
The  real  world  has  everything  to  do  with  us 
and  with  what  we  can  conceive  and  hope  and 
imagine.  What  but  this  is  the  meaning  of 
science  and  of  art?  Surely  things  are  shot 
through  with  reason,  and  often  with  beauty 
too.     'How  exquisitely,'  as  Wordsworth  says, 

'the  external  world  is  fitted  to  the  mind."2 

1  Literary  Studies,  iii.   (essay  on  'The  Ignorance  of  Man'). 

2  The  Excursion:  preface. 


32  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

In  short,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  'dull  matter.' 
There  may  be  dull  men.  There  is  something 
'more  stupid  than  a  big  stone  as  a  big  stone/ 
and  that  is  the  mind  of  Peter  Bell,  to  whom  a 
big  stone  exists  only  as  a  big  stone  and  'nothing 
more.'  Tennyson's  lines,  addressed  to  not 
anything  so  important  as  'a  great  tropical 
plant'  but  merely  to  a  'little  flower,'  are  nearer 
to  the  truth  of  things: — 

'Flower  in  the  crannied  wall, 
I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies, 
I  hold  you  here,  root  and  all,  in  my  hand, 
Little  flower — but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is.' 

There  is  more  philosophy  here  than  in  asking 
'What  has  such  an  object  to  do  with  us?  I  do 
not  think  that  I  need  to  dwell  on  this.  I  trust 
that,  despite  tropical  plants,  however  great 
their  stalks,  despite  humming-birds  and  even 
beetles,  despite  pits  and  quarries,  yea,  despite 
gravel  itself,  we  may  yet  hold  fast  the  faith. 
The  problem,  however,  is  more  real,  and 
must  be  treated  more  seriously  when  we  look 
at  the  operations  of  the  natural  world.     It  is 


THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD      33 

indeed  not  easy  to  perceive  there  any  law  or 
order  which  proceeds  from  the  God  of  whose 
character  Christian  faith  tells  us  in  Christ. 
This  is  a  rational  world,  but  it  is  not  plainly 
a  moral  world — still  less  a  world  illustrating 
the  high  ethical  and  spiritual  laws  of  the  gos- 
pel. The  processes  of  nature  seem  to  have 
nothing  to  do  with  considerations  of  morality, 
while  its  whole  dominating  principle  of  evolu- 
tion through  a  struggle  for  existence  is  ap- 
parently the  very  negation  of  the  great  spiritual 
principle  of  self-sacrifice.  It  is  well  known 
how  emphatically  Huxley  asserted  this  in  a 
notable  Romanes  lecture.  'It  is  impossible,' 
he  said,  'to  look  the  world  in  the  face,  and 
bring  the  course  of  nature  into  harmony  with 
even  the  elementary  requirements  of  the  ethical 
ideal  of  the  just  and  the  good.'  Indeed,  'the 
cosmic  process,'  he  goes  on  to  declare,  'has  no 
kind  of  relation  to  moral  ends.'1  There  is  a 
problem  here  which  must  be  patent  to  every 
observant  mind. 

1  Evolution  and  Ethics  (in  Collected  Essays  by  T.  H.  Hux- 
ley, ix.  ii.). 


34  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

It  is  generally  admitted  that  Huxley's  state- 
ment of  it  is  too  one-sided,  i  There  is  even  in 
the  struggle  for  existence  another  side,  in  which 
are  developed  the  altruistic  qualities  of  'the 
love  of  mates,  parental  sacrifice,  filial  affection, 
the  kindliness  of  kindred,  gregariousness,  so- 
ciality, co-operation,  mutual  aid,  and  altruism 
generally.'1  The  business  of  evolution  is  love 
as  well  as  hunger,  and  calls  out  self-sacrifice  as 
well  as  self-preservation.  The  exaggeration 
of  such  a  statement  as  that  'the  cosmic  process 
has  no  kind  of  relation  to  moral  ends'  is  further 
apparent  from  the  very  fact  that  we  are  con- 
sidering this  problem  at  all.  For  who  or  what 
is  it  that  thus  condemns  the  morality  of  nature? 
It  is  man,  who  is  himself  a  product  of  nature 
and  the  crown  of  its  evolution.  Surely  we 
cannot  call  that  process  altogether  immoral 
which  culminates  in  a  protest  in  the  name  of 
morality.  How  does  a  non-moral  system 
evolve  a  moral  product?  How — to  put  it 
more  personally — did  a  non-ethical  cosmic 
process  develop  so  ethically  sensitive  a  Ro- 
manes lecturer? 

1  Darwinism  and  Human  Life,  by  J.  Arthur  Thomson,  p.  88. 


THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD      35 

So  this  sweeping  arraignment  of  nature  must 
be  taken  with  some  qualification.  It  is  really 
an  arraignment  of  nature  with  part  left  out, 
and  that  part,  in  the  end,  its  full  and  final 
development  in  man.  But  if  nature  is  to  be 
judged  it  must  be  judged  as  a  whole,  and 
further,  its  lower  stages  interpreted  in  terms 
of  the  later  and  higher.  The  whole  of  nature 
includes  morality  in  germ  from  an  early  stage, 
and  certainly,  in  its  later  stage,  includes  human 
morality  as  really  as  the  law  of  gravitation  or 
the  positively  immoral  struggle  for  existence. 
Viewing  thus  nature  as  a  whole,  we  find  not 
simply  that  it  is  non-moral,  and  certainly  not 
that  it  has  'no  kind  of  relation  to  moral  ends,' 
which  is  palpably  not  the  fact,  but  that  it  is 
in  part  non-moral  and  in  part  moral.  This, 
of  course,  Huxley  admits — though  he  calls 
only  the  non-moral  part  'nature'  and,  for  no 
apparent  reason,  calls  morality  'an  artificial 
world'  which  man  has  built  up  within  the  other 
— and  it  is  the  opposition  between  them  which 
is  his  problem,  in  which  he  finds  'the  roots  of 
pessimism.'  Now  certainly  if  the  non-moral 
part  of  nature  which  we  see  so  largely  in  the 


36  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

physical  world  and  the  moral  part  of  it  which 
wc  see  in  man  are  merely  set  against  one  an- 
other, and  the  one  part  held  to  have  no  re- 
lation to  the  other,  a  dualism  is  declared  which 
it  is  hard  for  faith  to  meet — not  merely  Chris- 
tian faith,  but  faith  of  any  kind  in  a  rational 
and  moral  cosmos;  moreover,  since  man's  re- 
sistance to  the  physical  powers  of  the  universe 
is  futile,  it  would  seem  the  only  creed  is  an 
unhoping  stoicism.  But  are  we  driven  to  this 
dualism  and  this  pessimism?  Is  it  not  possible 
to  discern  a  deeper  unity  which  reconciles  the 
difference  and  relieves  the  despair? 

Let  us  try  to  answer  this  question  not  so 
much  by  abstract  philosophy  about  the  world — 
really  one  can  philosophise  in  an  abstract  way 
about  the  world  to  any  conclusion — as  by  that 
appeal  to  experience  of  which  so  much  was 
said  in  the  opening  chapter.  Each  of  us  finds 
the  problem  in  miniature  in  the  area  of  his 
own  life.  We  are  all  denizens  of  this  dual 
world — a  world,  on  the  one  hand,  of  moral 
principles  and  ideals,  and,  on  the  other,  of 
conditions  and  forces  about  us  which  are  in- 


THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD      ^7 

different  and  hostile  to  these  spiritual  elements. 
Is  this,  in  actual  experience,  merely  a  dualism, 
the  one  part  of  which  has  no  relation  to  the 
other  but  that  of  indifference  or  alienation? 
I  think  we  have  only  to  look  at  the  making 
of  human  character  to  see  an  answer  to  that 
question.  The  moral  character  of  man  is  the 
unity  which  is  deeper  than  this  difference,  and 
to  it  both  aspects  of  this  dual  world  contribute. 
For  such  character  is  the  fruit  not  simply  of 
spiritual  instincts  and  ideals,  or  of  these  oper- 
ating in  an  ethical  vacuum;  it  is  the  fruit  of 
these  rising  up  out  of  and  maintaining  them- 
selves against  the  neutrality  and  even  the  an- 
tagonism of  a  non-moral  world.  Whatever 
morality  may  mean  for  other  beings  and  in 
other  spheres,  of  which  we  know  nothing,  cer- 
tainly 'for  beings  such  as  we  are  and  in  such 
a  world  as  this'  (to  use  Butler's  phraseology) 
the  moral  life  means  a  moral  choice  and  a 
moral  conflict.  And  a  moral  choice  means  a 
morally  neutral  world  in  which  to  choose,  and 
a  moral  conflict  means  even  a  hostile  element 
in  the  world  against  which  the  moral  ideal  is 


38  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

to  be  asserted.  So  the  ethical  indifference  of 
the  natural  world  and  even  its  unethical  proc- 
esses simply  mean  that  nature  will  not  bribe 
or  coerce  man's  moral  choice,  and  further,  will 
test  it.  Consider  how  moral  character  would 
be  practically  meaningless  if  it  were  otherwise. 
If  nature  were  insistently  and  immediately 
moral,  we  should  not  be.  Let  us  imagine  a 
world  whose  natural  laws  and  processes  were 
made  palpably  and  invariably  subject  to  moral 
canons,  and  observe  the  result.  If  the  rain  fell 
on  the  land  only  of  the  virtuous  farmer,  if 
calamity  should  depend  on  character,  if  gravi- 
tation should  involve  the  sinner  but  exempt 
the  saint  from  injury,  then  virtue  would  be 
prudential  rather  than  moral,  and  goodness 
the  saving  less  of  the  soul  than  of  the  skin. 
Morality,  I  repeat,  is  morality  for  man,  only 
if  it  be  a  choice  and  a  conflict;  and  the  func- 
tion of  the  non-moral  and,  in  places,  anti-moral 
processes  of  nature  is  just  that,  in  face  of 
these,  the  moral  consciousness  may  choose  and 
may  contend  even  against  odds,  and  so  be 
worthy  of  the  name  of  moral. 


THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD      39 

Thus  if  we  view  nature  as  a  whole,  includ- 
ing therein  the  moral  life  of  man,  and  interpret 
its  lower  stages  in  the  light  of  its  higher,  we 
find  we  must  revise  our  characterisation,  of  it 
as  having  no  relation  to  moral  ends.  And  to 
interpret  the  lower  in  connection  with  the 
higher  is  surely  the  only  right  way.  Life — 
the  life  of  nature  as  a  whole  or  of  any  or- 
ganism in  nature — is  a  unity.  Its  meaning  is 
to  be  found  in  a  synthesis,  not  merely  in  the 
analysis  of  sections  taken  separately.  And  th« 
synthesis  is  not  found  in  the  incomplete  but  in 
the  more  complete — in  the  flower,  not  in  the 
seed.  Therefore  it  is  no  fond  anthropocentric 
egotism  but  a  true  principle  for  either  science 
or  philosophy  to  find  the  key  to  all  the  prob- 
lems of  nature — and  certainly  its  deeper  and 
more  spiritual  enigmas,  such  as  this  now  be- 
fore us — in  the  moral  self-consciousness  of 
man  which  is  the  crown  of  nature.  When  we 
do  this  we  find  'nature'  even  in  its  limited 
physical  sense  to  be  part  of  the  stuff  from 
which  man's  moral  life  is  made.  The  cosmic 
process  is  not  ethical,  but  it  is  used  for  ethical 


4o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

ends.  It  is  not  the  theatre  only  but  also  the 
needful,  though  unconscious,  minister  of  the 
making  of  the  moral  life. 

All  this  is  not  merely  of  speculative  interest; 
it  is  also  of  practical  concern.  If  our  doctrine 
of  the  world  be  that  nature  is  hopelessly  and 
finally  non-ethical,  and  that  it  has  'no  kind  of 
relation'  to  man's  moral  life,  then  it  is  im- 
possible not  to  be  chilled  in  all  our  moral  out- 
look and  endeavour.  We  must  feel  that  man 
has  been  placed  in  the  wrong  world  for  his 
spiritual  ideals.  Even  when  this  does  not  lead 
us  to  give  up  the  moral  ideal  altogether — as, 
,  perhaps,  logically  it  should — certainly  it  dis- 
courages anything  like  a  vigorous  and  victori- 
ous moral  faith.  We  fall  into  the  view  of  life 
in  relation  to  nature  pictured  in  Matthew  Ar- 
nold's Empedocles  in  Etna,  where  man's  aims 
and  efforts  are  met  at  every  turn  by  an  indiffer- 
ent and  ever  opposing  world  which  goes 
straight  on  with  its  life  regardless  of  his,  and 
the  conclusion  is  that  we  must  not  seek  too 
much,  though,  since  some  'moderate  bliss'  is 
attainable,  we  need  not  wholly  despair.     It  is 


THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD      41 

of  happiness  the  poet  is  speaking,  but  the  con- 
clusion is  still  more  easily  reached  as  regards 
the  spiritual  ambition  and  endeavour.  But  this 
is  not  the  wrong  world  for  man's  highest  life. 
Just  because  it  is  a  difficult  world  for  his  spir- 
itual ideals,  it  is  the  very  world  for  moral  choice 
and  moral  conflict  and  moral  character.  Poets 
more  virile  than  Arnold — who  seemed  to  be 
able  to  get  good  from  nature  only  in  certain 
kinds  of  weather — know  this;  Browning  and 
still  more  George  Meredith  know  it  is  through 
this  antagonism  that  'flesh  unto  spirit  must 
grow.'  And  so  I  say  again  man  is  not  in  the 
wrong  world  for  his  spiritual  ideals.  He  is  in  a 
world  demanding  moral  choice  and  moral  con- 
flict, and  that  is  the  very  world  for  moral  char- 
acter. 'Rephan' — the  sphere  void  of  effort  and 
antagonism — is  a  poorer  home  for  us  than 
earth  with  all  its  struggles.1  To  sum  it  up  in 
a  word,  the  moral  life  for  us  must  be  what- 
ought-to-be  differentiated  from  and  maintained 
against  the  what-is;  and  thus  nature — the  great 
what-is — has  its  place,  and  its  necessary  place, 

1  Vide  Browning's  poem  with  this  title  in  Asolando. 


42  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

in  the  ethical  scheme  of  the  life  which  is  moral 
just  because  it  is  something  more  than  natural. 
Let  us  then  not  see  in  the  contradiction  between 
the  moral  ideal  within  and  the  non-moral  actual 
without  merely  (as  Huxley  does  in  the  lecture 
already  mentioned)  'the  roots  of  pessimism;' 
let  us  find  rather  the  conditions  of  morality 
itself. 

Hitherto  I  have  been  speaking  only  of  the 
physical  world  of  nature.  But  there  is  also 
round  about  us  a  spiritual  worldrby  which  I 
do  not  in  the  least  mean  here  anything  which 
theology  may  mean  by  that  (or  the  Psychical 
Society  may  mean),  but  only  that  we  live  amid 
a  system  of  forces  operating  upon  life  and 
character  and  destiny  other  than  merely  the 
play  of  winds  and  waves.  There  are  powers 
round  about  human  life  environing  man  with 
circumstance,  meeting  him  with  hap,  following 
up  his  acts  with  consequences,  in  the  end  seal- 
ing his  character  and  fate.  What  are  we  to 
think  of  this  world  in  which  our  lives  work  out 
their  lot?  Is  it,  too,  not  a  non-moral  system 
in  which  it  is  impossible  to  read  anything  but 


THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD      43 

chance  and  fate — a  chance  and  fate  far  re- 
moved indeed  from  the  moral  providence  and 
fatherhood  of  the  God  revealed  in  Jesus 
Christ?  This  subject  we  shall  discuss  in  the 
subsequent  chapters  of  the  book;  and — for 
reasons  I  shall  give  presently  before  closing 
this  chapter — I  propose  to  discuss  it  not  gen- 
erally but  rather  by  taking  up  specific  aspects 
of  life  where  the  problem  is  most  distinct  and 
acute.  Meanwhile  I  shall  make  one  general 
remark,  and  illustrate  it  with  a  brief  reference 
to  the  witness  of  the  greatest  name  in  literature. 
The  general  remark  is  that,  just  as  we  have 
seen  that  nature  must  not  in  every  phenomenon 
remind  us  of  moral  laws  and  insist  upon  our 
obedience  of  them,  so  life  must  not  do  so  in 
every  incident.  Therefore  it  is  not  any  valid 
argument  against  the  moral  order  of  life  if 
we  find  when  we  look  at  isolated  incidents 
(as  most  works  of  fiction  do)  that  there  is 
little  moral  purpose  to  be  seen,  but  only  hap 
and  fate.  It  is,  however,  different  when  we 
look  at  long  stretches  of  life  and  at  experience 
as  a  whole.     This  difference  is  apparent  even 


44  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

in  literature.  Nothing  is  more  noticeable  in 
modern  literature  than  that  it  is  the  greatest 
writers,  and  those  who  treat  life  at  length  and 
on  the  grand  scale,  who  most  of  all  at  least 
leave  room  in  their  presentation  for  deeper 
thoughts  than  that  of  our  existence  as  mean- 
ingless and  vain.  As  an  example  of  this  I  name 
Tolstoy,  not  in  his  hortatory  tracts — which,  to 
me  at  least,  are  unconvincing  and  tiresome — 
but  in  such  complete  and  superb  canvases  as 
Anna  Karenina  or  War  and  Peace.  But  let  us, 
without  discussing  modern  writers,  turn  to  the 
only  greatest. 

The  unique  and  incomparable  authority  of 
Shakespere  for  our  present  purpose  arises  not 
merely  from  his  supreme  pre-eminence  on  any 
matter  of  human  life  and  character  (except,  it 
must  be  said,  the  life  and  character  which  are 
distinctively  Christian),  but  also  and  particu- 
larly because  he  is  so  absolutely  free  from  any 
preconceived  moral  or  theological  theory  of 
life.  He  is  the  perfect  secularist,  simply  seeing 
what  men  do  and  are,  and  setting  down  the 
facts  of  life.     It  is  not  for  nothing  that  we 


THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD      45 

cannot  tell  what  Shakespere's  religion  was,  or 
if  he  had  any;1  if  we  could,  'the  less  Shake- 
spere  he.'  As  has  been  said  of  him  by  the  most 
critically  just  and  the  most  morally  discerning 
of  his  modern  interpreters : — 

'He  looked  at  this  "secular"  world  most  intently 
and  seriously;  and  he  painted  it,  we  cannot  but 
conclude,  with  entire  fidelity,  without  the  wish  to 
enforce  an  opinion  of  his  own,  and,  in  essential, 
without  regard  to  any  one's  hopes,  fears,  or  beliefs. 
His  greatness  is  largely  due  to  this  fidelity  in  a 
mind  of  extraordinary  power;  and  if,  as  a  private 
person,  he  had  a  religious  faith,  his  tragic  view  can 
hardly  have  been  in  contradiction  with  this  faith, 
but  must  have  been  included  in  it,  and  supple- 
mented, not  abolished,  by  additional  ideas.'2 

What  then  is  Shakespere's  'tragic  view' — 
his  view,  that  is  to  say,  of  human  hap  and  fate 
in  especially  the  darker  aspects  of  life?  No 
more  carefully  weighed  and  yet  also  more  pro- 
foundly sympathetic  answer  to  this  question 
has  been  given  than  in  the  book  from  which 

1  Nothing  can  be  more  futile  than  the  attempt  to  build  up 
a  theory  of  Shakespere's  personal  faith  from  sayings  of  the 
characters  of  his  plays. 

2  A.  C.  Bradley's  Shakesperian  Tragedy,  p.  25. 


46'  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

I  have  just  quoted.  I  shall  do  better  to  quote 
from  it  further  than  attempt  any  statement  of 
my  own.  Mr.  Bradley  finds  Shakespere's 
tragic  world  to  be,  on  the  one  hand,  'some- 
thing piteous,  fearful,  and  mysterious;'  yet,  on 
the  other,  'it  does  not  leave  us  crushed,  re- 
bellious, or  desperate.'  From  this  it  seems 
that  the  ultimate  power  revealed  therein  is  not 
a  moral  power  in  the  sense  of  one  always  just 
or  benevolent;  yet  neither  is  it  'a  face,  whether 
malicious  or  cruel,  or  blind  or  indifferent  to 
human  happiness  or  goodness,'  and  it  is  cer- 
tainly not  a  fate  in  the  sense  of  'a  blank  ne- 
cessity, totally  regardless  alike  of  human  weal 
and  of  the  difference  between  right  and  wrong.' 
It  shows  other  characteristics  'which  would 
lead  us  to  describe  it  as  a  moral  order  and  its 
necessity  as  a  moral  necessity.'  It  shows  itself 
'akin  to  good  and  alien  from  evil.'  It  traces 
suffering  and  death  to  sin.  It  makes  evil  to 
work  out  everywhere  'as  something  negative, 
barren,  weakening,  destructive,  a  principle  of 
death.'  And  when  there  comes  tragic  calamity, 
'the  suffering:  and  death  arise   from  collision, 


THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD      47 

not  with  a  fate  or  blank  power,  but  with  a 
moral  power.'  With  all  this  there  is — what 
Shakespere  again  and  again  impresses  on  us, 
but  not  more  often  or  more  deeply  than  life 
itself  does — an  appalling  'waste'  of  good.  Of 
this,  which  is  the  very  essence  of  the  tragic 
view  of  life,  no  solution  is  offered,  unless  by 
the  suggestion,  undefined  but  irresistible,  at  the 
close  of  the  greatest  tragedies — Hamlet  and 
King  Lear — that  this  tragic  world  is  no  final 
or  complete  reality,  and  that  even  its  victims 
vanish  (as  Mr.  Bradley  finely  puts  it)  'not  into 
nothingness  but  into  freedom.'1 

Such  then,  in  the  fewest  words,  is  the  'tragic' 
world  of  human  life  as  seen  by  the  sanest, 
surest,  and  most  searching  eyes  ever  bent  upon 
its  multiplex  mystery.  Some  readers  of  the 
foregoing  paragraph  may  wonder  that  I  have 
made  so  much  of  this.  But  any  one  who  has 
not  merely  read  Shakespere's  plays  or  ana- 
lysed his  dramatis  persona,  but  tried,  in  some 
degree,  to  grasp  as  a  whole  the  hardly  less 

1  Shakesperian  Tragedy,  pp.  25,  26,  30,  33,  35,  36,  37,  38. 
Also,  on  the  last  point,  pp.  322-7,  which  are  pages  worthy  of 
their  topic. 


48  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

than  infallibly  just  vision  of  life  in  the  drama- 
tist's mind  which  is  so  remarkably  detached 
from  all  its  dramatic  work  yet  surely  also  so 
deeply  in  it  all,  will  understand  that  it  is  by 
no  means  an  unimportant  or  irrelevant  thing 
to  consider  what  Shakespere  found  in  the  world 
of  life  to  be — the  world  in  which  we  are  asked 
to  believe  the  gospel.  Certainly  he  did  not 
find  it  a  world  which  declared  the  gospel;  the 
world  is  not  meant  to  do  that.  But  he  did 
not  find  it  a  world  so  morally  dead  and  mean- 
ingless as  practically  to  make  a  gospel  impos- 
sible. This,  I  repeat,  is  not  an  irrelevant  thing 
for  faith  to  know.  It  permits  us  at  least  to 
listen  whether  there  be  not  a  gospel. 

This  so-called  'indifferent  world'  then  belies 
its  title.  It  is  not  so  indifferent  as  it  seems. 
Its  physical  phenomena  are  shot  through  with 
reason;  its  moral  neutrality  is  the  school  of 
human  character;  its  life-order  adumbrates  a 
moral  order  even  in  its  tragedy. 

I  do  not  propose  to  discuss  further  the  gen- 
eral question  of  the  relation  to  faith  of  the 
world  we  live  in;  not  that  what  has  been  said 


THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD      49 

is  a  complete  argument,  but  because  I  believe 
that  the  real  difficulties  which  most  people  feel 
on  this  subject  are  not  about  life  and  nature 
in  general  but  arise  out  of  certain  things  in 
the  world.  To  these  particular  things,  then, 
I  shall  now  turn.  They  are  old  problems,  and 
perhaps  there  is  little  or  nothing  new  to  say 
upon  them.  But  they  present  themselves  afresh 
to  every  thinking  mind  and  call  always  for  re- 
consideration. It  is  true  that  the  way  of 
modern  thinkers  is  to  pass  over  these  definite 
questions  and  to  give  us  disquisitions  at  large 
about  life  and  a  principle  of  the  universe.  I 
know  that  exponents  of  such  modern  thinkers 
as  Dr.  Eucken  and  M.  Bergson  regard  the  dis- 
cussion of  'the  time-worn  problems  of  destiny, 
freedom,  and  the  mystery  of  pain  and  evil'  as 
an  out-of-date  survival  of  that  'intellectualism' 
from  which  the  conceptions  of  activism  and 
creative  evolution  have  liberated  the  mind.1 
Well,  we  have  all  been  stimulated  by  these 
attractive  and  invigorating  writers,  and  par- 
ticularly with  the  brilliant  suggestiveness  of  the 

1  Eucken  and  Bergson,  by  E.  Hermann,  p.  142. 


50  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

idea  of  revolution  creatrice  (the  value  of  which 
as  a  reaction  against  a  mechanical  and  ma- 
terialistic evolutionary  doctrine  is  very  highly 
to  be  estimated  even  by  those  who  find  some 
difficulty  in  M.  Bergson's  writings  in  knowing 
where  seductive  metaphor  ends  and  solid  data 
begin)  ;  but,  for  my  humble  part,  I  find,  after 
reading  these  general  philosophical  systems, 
that  the  difficulties  which  seem  to  contradict 
my  faith  in  the  gospel — the  real  and  nameable 
and  concrete  difficulties  of  life — are  exactly 
where  they  were.  Indeed,  I  often  feel  that 
the  systematic  philosopher  knows  little  of  doubt 
in  the  real  and  deadly  sense.  The  truth  is — 
though  in  saying  this  I  mean  no  kind  of  dis- 
respect to  the  works  of  philosophical  system — 
it  is  so  easy  to  generalise.  And  there  is  noth- 
ing about  which  to  generalise  is  so  easy  as  just 
the  universe.  It  is  easier  to  philosophise  about 
the  universe  than  to  face  this  or  that  difficult 
thing  in  it,  jut  as  it  is  easier  to  make  sapient 
observations  about  human  nature  than  justly 
to  judge  the  character  of  this  or  that  man  or 
woman.     Therefore  in  these  pages  I  am  going 


THE  INDIFFERENT  WORLD      51 

to  turn  again  to  these  definite  'time-worn  prob- 
lems,' because  I  am  sure  it  is  in  these,  and  not  in 
the  world  at  large,  that  most  men  find  their 
faith  most  really  challenged.  I  give  notice  of 
this  in  order  that  the  reader  who  prefers  to 
discuss  the  general  philosophy  of  the  universe 
may  at  this  point — if  indeed  he  has  not  done 
it  already — throw  this  book  away. 


II 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN 


'If  God  I  sought  where  He  has  wrought 

Works  lovely  and  sublime, 
With  eyes  of  doubt,  Pain  pointed  out 

Earth's  misery  and  crime. 

From  summer  skies  and  sunset  dyes 

He  takes  the  glory  quite, 
Nor  lets  me  see   (so  cruel  he) 

The  splendours  of  the  night. 

Now  where  is  rest,  when  such  a  guest 

Me  ever  followeth, 
Nor  lets  me  clasp  with  desperate  grasp 

The  outstretched  hand  of  Death?' 

M. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN 

The  two  features  of  the  world  which  at  once 
and  palpably  seem  in  conflict  with  faith  in  God 
are  suffering,  which  is  in  apparent  contradic- 
tion to  Divine  Love,  and  sin,  which  is  out  of 
harmony  with  Divine  Righteousness.  These 
are  indubitably  connected;  yet  each  presents 
its  own  problem.  That  of  suffering  lies,  I  be- 
lieve, more  deeply  on  many  minds  than  they 
ever  tell;  it  is  not  the  whimperers  who  feel  it 
most,  but  patient  and  quiet  souls.  It  oppressed 
the  grave  and  reverent  mind  of  Darwin,  and 
seemed  to  him  'a  strong  argument  against  the 
existence  of  an  intelligent  First  Cause.'1  With 
Darwin  the  problem  was  largely  that  of  the 
meaning  of  suffering  in  the  animal  world;  but 
into  that  question  I  do  not  propose  to  enter 
here,  not  that  I  do  not  feel  there  is  a  mystery 


1  Life  and  Letters,  ii.  311. 

6  55 


56  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

there  (which,  if  by  some  exaggerated  beyond 
the  facts,  is  by  others  too  easily  dismissed), 
but  because  it  hardly  comes  within  the  com- 
ment of  personal  experience  which  is  our  topic 
in  these  pages.  The  problem  of  human  suffer- 
ing calls  for  our  consideration  as  a  part  of 
that  experience,  and  it  may  be  enough  to  deal 
here  only  with  it. 

Surely  it  is  unnecessary  to  awaken  the  mind 
to  realise  how  real  the  problem  is,  and  I  shall 
not  here  indulge  in  any  pictorial  description  of 
the  spectacle  of  suffering.  A  comfortable  op- 
timism may  minimise  it,  pointing  out — what 
doubtless  is  true — that  there  are  in  the  world 
a  far  greater  number  of  persons  happy  than 
there  are  afflicted;  while  another  type  of  tem- 
perament will  find  all  life  lying  in  the  dark 
shadow  of  suffering,  and  build  up  a  philosophy 
of  pessimism.  It  is  enough  for  our  present 
purpose  to  say,  without  accepting  either  ex- 
treme, that  indubitably  there  is  in  the  world 
an  amount  of  sorrow  and  pain  and  wrong  suffi- 
cient to  challenge  any  facile  faith.  We  hardly 
dare,    indeed,    to    think   how   great    and    how 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         57 

poignant  it  is.  Our  imaginations  simply  skate 
over  the  surface  ice  of  human  woe.  To  plumb 
its  nether  deeps  would  break  the  heart.  To 
pursue  the  investigation  in  some  cases  only  a 
little  way  is  to  feel  faith  becoming  chilled  to 
the  marrow.  Instinctively  we  shut  our  eyes 
to  much  of  this  side  of  life;  but  when  we  really 
look  at  it,  the  problem  of  faith  is  indisputable. 

It  is  a  problem  to  discuss  which  abstractly 
is  of  little  use.  Pain  is  essentially  a  personal 
thing — a  thing  in  the  personal  experience  of 
individuals.  It  is  not,  therefore,  the  place  of 
pain  in  the  scheme  of  the  universe  we  must 
consider,  but  the  place  of  pain  in  men's  and 
women's  lives.  To  this,  then,  I  turn  at  once. 
I  think  we  shall  find  things  here  which,  if  they 
do  not  solve  the  problem — for  that,  as  I  shall 
say  before  the  chapter  closes,  something  more 
must  be  added — at  least  illuminate  it. 

In  the  first  place,  we  find  that  suffering  in 
human  lives  is,  in  the  most  real  sense,  part  of 
these  lives.  What  I  mean  is  this.  When  a 
child  first  encounters  the  fact  of  pain  he  resents 
it  as  external,  intrusive,  unnecessary,  alien.    He 


58  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

does  not  accept  it  as  any  necessary  part  of  life. 
It  is  something  simply  to  be  avoided.  But, 
gradually  as  we  grow  older,  we  come  to  see 
that  the  element  of  suffering  is  more  than  this. 
It  is  not  something  obstructive  among  the  fac- 
tors of  human  life,  but  is  itself  one  of  the  very 
greatest  of  these  factors — an  integral  element 
of  both  physical  and  moral  existence.  In  phys- 
ical evolution  a  painful  struggle  is  the  very  law 
of  existence;  and,  in  higher  forms  of  life,  pain 
— as  I  shall  say  more  particularly  immediately 
— plays  an  even  more  important  part.  To  ob- 
ject to  pain,  therefore,  is  not  to  object  to  some 
alien  thing  which  has  got  into  life,  as  a  needle 
gets  into  the  finger;  it  is  to  object  to  the  very 
fibre  and  tissue  of  life  itself.  This  may  not 
seem  very  important;  but  it  is  important,  for 
it  suggests  that  our  true  attitude  to  this  ele- 
ment in  life  is  not  to  try  to  deny  it  or  eliminate 
it  (as  the  Christian  Scientist  would  do),  but 
to  understand  what  is  its  function. 

A  second  thing  about  pain  which  experience 
teaches  us  to  observe  makes  this  clearer.  We 
cannot  but   discover   from  life   that  pain   in- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         59 

creases  as  life  becomes  higher.  This  is  not 
what  we  should  expect,  and  it  is  certainly  not 
what  we  should  have  chosen;  but  it  is  so. 
Nature  evolves  physically,  and  highly  organ- 
ised creatures  feel  more  pain  than  do  the  lower. 
It  evolves  to  consciousness  and  to  reason,  and 
man  has  sufferings  to  which  the  brute  is  a 
stranger.1  It  evolves  spiritually,  and  the  artist 
and  still  more  the  saint  can  know  agonies  of 
soul  which  the  low-minded  and  worldly  man 
is  spared.  And  one  must  with  reverence  add 
that  He  whom  we  call  the  Perfect  Man  was 
the  Man  of  Sorrows,  and  His  crown  was  a 
crown  of  thorns.  I  do  not  forget  in  saying 
this  that,  as  human  life  becomes  higher,  its 
joy  also  increases.  Still,  it  is  not  otherwise 
than  through  suffering  that  these  higher  joys 
are  reached.  And  they  involve,  too,  keener 
pains;  if  the  purest  joy  of  purest  souls  is  love, 
nothing  suffers  as  love  can  suffer.  This,  then, 
is  a  second  thing  which  experience  shows  us 
about  this  difficult  element  in  life — it  is  not 

1  This  is  one  of  the  facts  often  forgotten  in  statements  of  the 
problem  of  suffering  in  the  animal  world. 


6o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

merely  an  integral  part  of  life  but  a  part  which, 
far  from  being  discarded,  is,  on  the  contrary, 
developed  as  life  attains  to  higher  things. 

These  two  things,  however  true,  do  not  help 
us  much  in  the  problem  for  faith  till  they  are 
linked  to  a  third  thing  about  the  fact  of  suffer- 
ing which  experience  teaches  us  even  more 
clearly.  Here  I  must  be  allowed  to  start  from 
the  premiss — which  surely  it  is  not  necessary 
to  argue  in  these  pages — that  man's  true  life 
and  destiny  are  in  character.  Whenever  we 
accept  this — which,  one  may  remark,  at  once 
puts  out  of  court  all  the  criticism  of  pain  which 
is  simply  the  chagrin  of  a  thwarted  hedonism 
— experience  at  once  comes  forward  to  tell  us 
that  no  one  other  thing  in  life  carves  and 
chastens  the  moral  character  in  man  as  suffer- 
ing does.  This  must  not  be  said  in  any  spirit 
of  forced  and  false  asceticism.  The  idea  that 
pain  is  a  good  is  a  dogma  of  medievalism  or 
heathenism,  and  is  neither  supported  by  a  sane 
philosophy  nor  corroborated  by  experience. 
What  experience  tells  us  is  not  any  theory  of 
pain  as  good,  but  the  fact  of  life  that. char- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         61 

acter  reaches  its  crown  and  completion  only 
through  the  tests  of  this  discipline.  No  earnest 
and  candid  mind  can  look  carefully  at  life  with- 
out perceiving  this,  and  without  recognising 
that  there  is  nothing  which  deepens  the  mind, 
cleanses  the  heart,  and  chastens  the  whole  spir- 
itual being  of  man  as  suffering  does — either 
his  own  suffering  or  that  of  others  which  he 
makes  his  own  by  sympathy./  Indeed,  does  not 
human  character  seem  to  need  this  element  in 
experience  if  it  is  to  attain  its  highest?1  Is 
it  not  true  that  a  life — other  than  a  child's — 
which  knew  only  happiness  and  sunshine  would 
almost  inevitably  become  an  ignoble  life?  Nie- 
mand  wird  ohne  Leiden  geadelt — without  sor- 
rows no  one  becomes  noble.  This  is  true  not 
only  of  the  more  distinctively  moral  or  re- 
ligious side  of  character,  but  also  of  art  and 
of  love.  I  do  not  say  that  suffering  always 
makes  the  mind  or  heart  or  character  noble. 
There  are  many  facts  in  life  which  disprove 

1  I  recall  the  late  Pastor  von  Bodelschwink — the  founder  of 
the  great  Colome  Bethel  (for  epileptics  and  other  sufferers)  at 
Bielefeld,  Germany,  once  saying  to  me  in  the  face  of  that 
spectacle  of  affliction:  'But  there  is  not  more  than  we  need.' 


62  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

that.  In  generalising  about  life  one  must  never 
let  oneself  forget  that  humanity  is  not  an  ab- 
stract generalisation,  but  is  composed  of  indi- 
viduals, and  that  individuals  differ.  In  many 
cases  suffering  deadens  rather  than  illumines 
the  mind,  and  embitters  rather  than  purifies 
the  heart,  and  even  demeans  rather  than  en- 
nobles the  character.  Still,  this  does  not  alter 
the  broad  fact  of  the  great  work  which  this 
dark  element  in  experience  does,  as  is  witnessed 
to  alike  by  some  of  the  greatest  things  in  lit- 
erature and  some  of  the  deepest  things  in  life. 
Into  the  witness  of  literature  on  this  subject 
I  cannot  possibly  enter,  and  shall  say  of  it  here 
only  one  thing,  that  it  is  not  by  any  means  con- 
fined to  Christian  or  even  specifically  religious 
writers,  but,  on  the  contrary,  finds  its  most 
notable  illustrations  in  classics  written  purely 
from  the  human  and  secular  standpoint.  Look 
— for  but  a  moment — at  the  great  Greek  dram- 
atists. The  problem  of  suffering  is  continually 
before  iEschylus  and  Sophocles  and  Euripides. 
They  offer  no  solution  of  it,  but  all  of  them 
find  it — in  at  least  some  aspects — both  mean- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         63 

ingful  and  moral.  For  iEschylus  it  is  pri- 
marily retributive,  but,  in  addition,  it  is  edu- 
cative too,  and  he  preaches  'the  sure  ordinance 
that  by  suffering  shalt  thou  learn.' 1  Sophocles 
— 'who  saw  life  steadily  and  saw  it  whole' — 
is  too  reasonable  to  maintain  the  retribution 
theory  at  the  expense  of  facts,  and  dwells 
rather  on  the  way  in  which  the  mind  is  en- 
lightened and  the  character  chastened  through 
discipline  and  pain;  thus,  in  what  is  the  most 
appalling  case  of  unmerited  suffering  in  litera- 
ture, CEdipus  is  purged  of  his  earlier  faults, 
and  is  made  (in  the  later  play  bearing  his 
name)  a  new  man  because  of  all  the  unspeak- 
able agony  he  has  had  to  bear.  But  Sophocles 
sees  more  than  this.  He  sees  how  human  suf- 
fering is  working  out  wide  and  great  purposes, 
beyond  the  sufferer,  in  history  and  for  hu- 
manity; thus  the  martyrdom  of  Philoctetes  is 
ordained  for  great  ends  in  Troy,  and  the  sacri- 
fice of  Antigone,  whose  dying  word  is  that  she 
suffers  because  she  'feared  to  cast  away  the  fear 
of  Heaven,'2  is  for  the  exhibition  and  vindi- 

1  Agamemnon,  188  sqq.  2  Antigone,  942. 


64  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

eating  of  the  law  of  the  higher  life.  And  even 
Euripides — (most  tragic  of  poets,'  in  whose 
dramas  the  contending  forces  of  existence  are 
least  reconciled — feels  the  same  truth,  and  in 
his  most  tragic  pages;  even  Hecuba,  who, 
amid  the  dire  fate  of  the  Trojan  women,  can 
see  at  first  'nothing,  nothing  but  the  rod  of 
mine  affliction,'  discerns  presently  how  God  has 
'turned  us  in  His  hand'  and  'all  is  well'  and 
'our  wrong  an  everlasting  splendour.'2  Thus 
— though  I  have  insulted  so  fine  a  theme  by 
so  momentary  a  glance — do  these  supreme 
writers  of  the  old  pre-Christian  time  all  find 
the  morality  and  the  meaning  that  are  some- 
where in  the  fact  of  suffering. 

And  what  literature  thus  so  greatly  teaches, 
how  deeply  and  surely  does  life  confirm,  show- 
ing us  one  by  one  that  the  discipline  of  sorrow 
and  suffering  is  just  the  very  thing  our  moral 
and  spiritual  character  simply  could  not  have 
done  without.  This  is  not  a  mere  pietism;  it 
is  a  fact  of  experience  if  anything  is.  The 
present  writer — if  he   may  be   pardoned  the 

2  Troades,  1240  sqq. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         65 

personal  reference— has  had  it  said  to  him  not 
once  or  twice  but  many  times,  in  almost  these 
very  words,  by  persons  of  widely  different 
characters;  and  his  experience  in  this  is  only 
what  any  one  could  give  who  has  had  any 
occasion  to  come  into  more  intimate  contact 
with  human  lives.  And  again  and  again  we 
may  observe  it  for  ourselves.  We  see  how 
some  loss  or  pain  is  not  a  mere  negation  in 
our  own  or  other's  lives,  but  is  really 

'a  part, 
And  that  a  needful  part,  in  making  up 
The  calm  existence  which  is  mine  when  I 
Am  worthy  of  myself.'1 

Or  we  say  of  it  more  simply — and  the  more 
simply  this  kind  of  thing  is  said  the  better2 — 
with  the  old  psalmist:  Tt  is  good  for  me  that 
I  have  been  afflicted.'  As  life  goes  on,  a  great 
many  people  come  to  see  this  in  at  least  their 
own  lives.     To  see  it  in  the  lives  of  others  is 

1  Wordsworth's  Prelude,  bk.  i. 

2  When  it  is  said  at  length  and  self-consciously  (as  in  Mr. 
A.  C.  Benson's  Rod  and  Staff)  it  produces  a  dubious  effect  on 
the  reader. 


66  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

often  not  so  clear;  but  we  may  be  not  meant 
to  hold  the  key  of  any  life  but  our  own. 

Now,  if  this  be  true,  what  does  it  mean?  It 
means  this  at  least,  that  the  element  of  pain 
and  loss  in  human  life  is  not  a  meaningless 
thing,  and  that,  indeed,  it  is  essentially  a  moral 
thing.  This  is  really  a  great  position,  if  we 
can  attain  it.  The  bitterest  thing  in  pain  and 
loss  is  that  it  is  all  mere  chance — mere  un- 
meaning accident.  It  is  this,  for  example,  which 
adds  the  last  bitter  drop  to  the  confirmed 
pessimism  of  one  of  the  most  powerful  of  liv- 
ing English  novelists.  Mr.  Hardy  is  constantly 
making  us  feel  how  by  some  little  trifle — the 
merest  chance  or  accident — happiness  is  baffled 
and  the  souls  and  lives  of  men  and  women 
doomed.  In  some  of  his  outspoken  poems  he 
expresses  this  as  a  definite  view  of  pain  in 
the  world,  as  in  the  following  lines,  entitled 
'Hap': 

'If  but  some  vengeful  god  would  call  to  me 
From  out  the  sky,  and  laugh:  "Thou  suffering  thing, 
Know  that  thy  sorrow  is  my  ecstasy, 
That  thy  love's  loss  is  my  hate's  profiting!" 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         67 

Then  would  I  bear,  and  clench  myself,  and  die, 
Steeled  by  the  sense  of  ire  unmerited; 
Half  eased  in  that  a  Powerfuller  than  I 
Had  willed  and  meted  me  the  tears  I  shed. 
But  not  so.     How  arrives  it  joy  lies  slain, 
And  why  unblooms  the  best  hope  ever  sown? 
— Crass  Casualty  obstructs  the  sun  and  rain, 
And  dicing  Time  for  gladness  casts  a  moan. 
These  purblind  Doomsters  had  as  readily  strown 
Blisses  about  my  pilgrimage  as  pain.'1 

Mr.  Hardy  is  an  author  whose  darkest  pages 
are  to  be  read  with  a  certain  respect,  for  his 
is  not  a  cheap  cynicism  but  a  sincere,  if  a 
mordant,  unfaith.  But  I  do  not  think  a  sonnet 
such  as  the  above  is  the  true  account  of  the 
element  of  suffering  in  life,  when  life  is  looked 
over  in  some  long  stretch — and  life  cannot  be 
truly  seen  except  in  long  stretches — or  the  true 
echo  of  what  most  men  feel  about  their  greatest 
sorrows.  The  smaller  pains  and  losses  of  life 
suggest  this  thought  of  mere  bad  hap.  But 
life's  great  sorrows  and  afflictions  suggest 
otherwise.  As  has  been  finely  said,  'les  don- 
leurs  passageres  blasphement  et  accusent  le  del; 

1  JVessex  Poems,  p.  7. 


68  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

les  grandes  douleurs  ny accusent  ni  ne  blasphe- 
ment;  elles  ecoutent.'1 

This,  then,  I  think  is  the  great  comment  of 
experience  on  the  problem  of  pain — that  suf- 
fering is  a  meaningful  thing,  accomplishing 
moral  ends.  And  this,  therefore,  is  the 
changed  attitude  to  the  problem  into  which 
experience  leads  us — it  bids  us,  instead  of  criti- 
cising and  complaining,  rather  listen  and  learn. 

But  our  problem  is  far  from  solved;  indeed 
it  is,  at  its  most  crucial  point,  not  yet  touched. 
For  there  is  another  broad  comment  of  ex- 
perience upon  pain,  and  this  intensifies  instead 
of  relieving  the  enigma. 

Nothing  is  more  apparent  to  the  observant 
and  sympathetic  mind  in  connection  with  human 
suffering  than  its  often  sheer  injustice.  Here 
is  the  real  crux  of  the  challenge  to  faith  in  this 
matter,  and  the  more  we  see  of  life  the  more 
keenly  is  this  felt.  A  man,  truly  taught  by 
experience,  will  not  say  his  own  sufferings  are 
unjust;  on  the  contrary,  he  will  say  that  God 
has  not  dealt  with  him  according  to  his  sins 

1  A.  de  Musset,  Confession  d'un  enfant  du  Steele,  III.  ii. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         69 

nor  rewarded  him  according  to  his  iniquities. 
But  as  he  looks  at  the  suffering  world  his  heart 
is  often  pierced  with  the  appalling  wrong  in  it. 
Think  of  but  a  single  aspect  of  it.  Think  of 
the  sufferings  of  thousands  of  helpless  and  in- 
nocent little  children,  whose  lives  from  their 
birth  are  a  daily  appeal  for  a  justice  which 
seems  to  have  no  ear  in  earth  or  heaven.  Con- 
siderations about  moral  development  do  not 
apply  here.  A  child's  character  needs  happi- 
ness, not  anguish.  And  the  child  does  not 
deserve  it.  A  bad  man  deserves  it,  but  not 
his  innocent  child.  Yet  a  man  is  vicious,  and 
his  child  bears  the  penalty.  The  thing  is  un- 
just. We  say  of  it  as  the  people  of  Israel 
said  of  it  in  the  days  of  Ezekiel;  'The  way 
of  the  Lord  is  not  equal.'  It  is  not  irreverence 
that  says  this;  it  is  the  finest  ethical  instinct 
of  our  nature.  Here  the  Christian  thought  of 
God's  love  and  righteousness  seems  to  meet  a 
shriek  of  contradiction — or,  in  the  pleading 
eyes  and  wan  faces  of  the  little  children  of 
whom  I  spoke,  a  silent  condemnation  severer 
still.      We   recall    a    happy   little   child  whom 


70  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

Jesus  once  placed  in  the  midst  of  His  disciples 
to  teach  them  a  lesson  of  faith.  There  are 
in  this  world  other  little  children,  and  when 
we  place  them  in  our  midst  our  faith  is  simply 
struck  dumb. 

This,  I  say  again,  is  the  acutest  part  of  the 
whole  problem — a  part  which  experience  seems 
to  do  nothing  to  ameliorate.  It  is  a  difficulty 
which  sinks  very  deep  into  the  mind  of  many 
people — especially,  I  believe,  many  women. 
Sometimes  it  is  said  that  women  have  not  a 
good  capacity  for  justice:  that  may  or  may 
not  be.  But  they  certainly  have  a  keen  sense 
of  injustice.  It  is  a  woman's  pen  which,  faced 
with  this  problem,  wrote,  as  with  a  flame: 
'There  is  no  justice.'1 

Well,  but  we  must  look  into  it,  not  with  the. 
flame  of  anger  but  with  the  light  of  reason. 
There  is  a  mental  habit  which  is  always  salu- 
tary and  is  never  more  useful  than  when  one 
is  shut  up  to  a  difficulty — namely,  to  think  out 
what  is  involved  in  the  alternative.  Let  us 
employ  that  method  here.      The  problem   is 

1  Olive  Schreiner's  Times  and  Seasons, 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         71 

that,  when  a  man  does  evil,  not  only  he  but 
others  who  are  innocent  are  involved  in  suffer- 
ing. But  think  what  it  would  mean  if  this 
were  not  so.  That  would  mean  that  the  man's 
life  is  something  isolated  from  all  other  lives, 
terminating  in  itself.  It  would  mean,  in  short, 
that  each  man  lives  to  himself,  and  that  we  are 
not  members  one  of  another.  Does  any  think- 
ing person  desire  that  this  should  be  the  law 
of  human  life?  It  would  not  only  impoverish 
life;  it  would  extinguish  it  in  any  real  and  rich 
sense.  It  would  make  impossible  the  whole 
progress  of  humanity  from  age  to  age  and 
race  to  race  and  man  to  man.  What  is  it 
which  makes  the  riches  and  reality,  even  the 
very  meaning,  of  life?  It  is  not  what  each 
man  has  merited,  earned,  achieved.  It  is,  far 
more,  what  he  has  inherited  and  received  from 
others.  Without  this  solidarity  in  the  life  of 
humanity  our  life  would  be  unthinkable.  We 
must  remember  this  great  law  or  fact  of  soli- 
darity when  we  are  questioning  the  justice  of 
God  in  the  problem  before  us. 

John  Stuart  Mill  in  his  essay  on  Nature  (one 


72 


THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 


of  his  three  famous  Essays  on  Religion)  lays 
down  the  extraordinary  proposition  that,  if 
God  were  omnipotent,  the  just  law  for  Him 
to  enforce  would  be  that  'each  person's  share 
of  suffering  and  happiness  would  be  exactly 
proportioned  to  that  person's  good  or  evil 
deeds,  and  no  human  being  would  have  a  worse 
lot  than  another  without  worse  deserts.'  Well, 
this  is  a  strange  and  difficult  world  in  which 
we  live;  but,  after  all,  I  am  thankful  to  live 
in  the  world  I  do  rather  than  in  the  world 
Mill  would  thus  organise  in  the  name  of  justice. 
He  would  indeed,  as  Charlotte  Bronte  once 
said  of  him,  'make  a  hard,  dry,  dismal  world 
of  it'  My  lot  in  life  reduced  to  what  is  ex- 
actly proportioned  to  my  individual  deeds 
would  leave  me  morally  and  intellectually  in 
absolute  starvation.  It  is  others'  great  and 
good  deeds — others'  moral  triumphs,  others' 
intellectual  conquests — which  have  made  my 
life  a  life  at  all.  And  if  no  human  being  should 
have  a  worse  lot  than  another  without  worse 
desert,   then  no   human  being  should  have   a 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         73 

better  lot  without  better  desert.  What  desert 
then  had  Mill  to  the  advantage  of  culture  and 
civilisation  which  a  poor  prehistoric  savage 
was  denied,  though  his  claim,  'exactly  propor- 
tioned to  that  person's  good  or  evil  deeds,'  may 
have  been  quite  as  good  as  that  of  a  modern 
philosopher's?  We  cannot  run  the  idea  of 
justice  on  the  lines  of  this  false  individualism. 
Mill  would  be  quite  right  if  man  were  an  iso- 
lated unit.  But  man  is  not  an  isolated  unit: 
science,  philosophy,  religion,  and  experience 
all  combine  to  repudiate  that  figment  of  the 
doctrinaire.1  'We  are  members  one  of  an- 
other.' We  live  together  and  progress  to- 
gether and  sin  together  and  suffer  together. 
Our  life  is  personal  because  it  is  not  only  in- 

1  That  science  (in  its  doctrine  of  heredity)  and  also  religion 
and  experience  attest  the  idea  of  solidarity  in  the  conception 
of  humanity  is  clear;  but  it  is  not  so  clear  as  regards  philoso- 
phy, which  may  seem — in,  for  example,  such  typical  thinkers 
as  Augustine  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  Descartes,  the  'father 
of  modern  philosophy' — to  emphasise  rather  the  relatedness  of 
personality  to  itself  or  what  we  call  self-consciousness.  But 
the  greatest  philosophical  masters  have  realised  that  self- 
consciousness    is   more    than    individual.     Aristotle,    who    de- 


74  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

dividual  but  also  organic.  It  is  the  greatest 
law  of  humanity,  and  without  it  the  very  word 
humanity  would  have  no  meaning.  To  repeal 
it  would  not  be  justice;  it  would  be  an  end  to 
life  in  any  human  sense  of  the  word.  And 
surely  no  thinking  person  will  suggest  that  it 
might  be  repealed  as  regards  evil,  while  re- 
tained as  regards  good.  This  will  not  bear 
any  scrutiny.  We  saw,  in  the  last  chapter,  how 
disadvantageous  for  morality  would  be  a  world 
with  one  set  of  neutral  laws  for  virtue  and 
another  for  vice.  Nature  metes  out  its  re- 
wards to  men  impartially — that  is  to  say, 
justly.  When  evil  consequences  follow,  it  is  not 
because  the  law — or  the  law-giver — is  unjust; 

scribed  man  as  a  being  'essentially  social'  (Pol.  i.  2),  kept 
hold  of  the  idea  all  through  his  system,  especially  in  the 
intimate  connection  he  established  between  ethics  and  politics. 
Similarly  Plato,  writing  really  on  human  nature  and  'how  to 
live  best,'  called  his  work  The  Republic  because  the  best  life 
is  essentially  social.  Again,  Kant  in  the  third — the  most 
difficult  and  least  known — of  his  Critiques,  emphasises  that 
existence  is  an  organism,  the  parts  of  which  can  be  understood 
not  as  existing  by  themselves  or  for  their  own  sake,  but  as  a 
whole,  each  part  of  which  is  also  part  of  the  rest.  This  is  an 
important  element  in  Kant's  doctrine  of  personality,  which  has 
been  neglected  by  expositors. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         75 

it  is  because  men's  deeds  have  been  evil.1  Eze- 
kiel's  reply  in  the  name  of  God  to  the  people 
who  murmured  that  'the  way  of  the  Lord  is 
not  equal'  is  true:  'Is  not  my  way  equal?  are 
not  your  ways  unequal?'2  There  are,  as  I 
admitted  at  the  outset,  aspects  of  the  problem 
of  suffering  which  are  distinguishable  from  the 
problem  of  sin;  but  in  the  end  to  this  deeper 
and  darker  mystery  we  are  thrown  back. 

And  yet  can  we  leave  the  question  of  suffer- 
ing and  pass  to  that  of  sin  with  merely  such  a 
cold  philosophic  word  as  solidarity?  That 
word  does  illumine  the  problem  to  some  ex- 
tent; but,  after  all,  human  suffering  is  not  a 
problem  of  philosophy;  it  is  a  problem  of 
persons — of  lives  rather  than  of  life.  When 
you  have  said  all  that  your  wise  philosophy 
can  say  about  suffering,  still  the  sufferers  re- 
main.   Sit  in  a  darkened  room  beside  some  one 

1 1  admit  this  does  not  meet  the  problem  of  the  unmerited 
suffering  occasioned  by  great  natural  calamities.  But  the  un- 
swerving operation  of  the  great  forces  of  nature  can  be  chal- 
lenged only  by  a  wisdom  which  can  judge  a  universe  or  a 
folly  which  forgets  it  cannot. 

2  Ezekiel  xviii.  25.  The  whole  chapter  shows  how  old  are 
our  'modern'  problems. 


76  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

who  is  racked  with  pain,  and  your  doctrine  of 
solidarity  is  a  poor  support  to  your  faith  in  a 
good  God.  We  have  not  faced  the  real  chal- 
lenge of  pain  to  the  soul  till  we  have  faced 
this — faced  it  in  the  cruellest  concrete  of  the 
actual  agony  of  a  personal  life.  I  have  said 
(at  the  close  of  the  previous  chapter)  that  it 
is  always  easy  to  generalise.  It  is  easy  to  gen- 
eralise even  about  the  problem  of  pain.  It  is 
not  easy  to  repeat  your  fine  moral  generalisa- 
tions before  a  living  soul — man  or  woman  or 
child — who  is  being  riven  with  helpless  anguish. 
That  no  one  may  say  I  am  slipping  through  this 
topic  on  generalisations,  I  shall  quote  the  fol- 
lowing picture  of  what  pain  really  is  from  a 
modern  novel  of  exceptional  truthfulness : — 

'When  he  returned  to  the  sick-room,  the  child 
was  in  convulsions.  He  stood  and  watched  it,  as 
though  he  would  kill  himself  with  the  sight;  these 
small  clenched  hands,  white  with  bluish  nails ;  these 
staring  eyes,  almost  rolling  out  of  their  sockets ;  this 
distorted  mouth,  and  the  little  teeth  grinding  like 
iron  against  a  stone — oh,  it  was  terrible,  and  yet 
this  was  not  the  worst.  No,  when  the  convulsions 
ceased  and  the  little  body,  growing  soft  and  flexible 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         77 

again,  abandoned  itself  to  the  joy  of  the  lesser  pain 
— the  fear  that  came  into  the  child's  eyes  when  it 
dimly  perceived  that  the  pain  was  returning,  the 
beseeching  appeals  for  help  as  the  torture  came 
nearer  and  nearer ;  oh,  to  see  all  this  and  be  power- 
less to  help,  help  even  with  his  heart's  blood,  with 
everything  that  he  possessed !  He  raised  his  clenched 
fist  threatingly  to  heaven,  he  seized  the  child  with 
an  insane  idea  of  flight,  and  then,  flinging  himself 
upon  his  knees,  he  prayed  to  the  God  in  heaven,  who 
holds  the  earth  in  subjection  by  means  of  trials  and 
discipline,  who  sends  need  and  sickness,  suffering 
and  death,  who  wills  that  every  knee  be  bent  in  fear 
and  trembling,  from  whom  no  flight  is  possible — 
either  to  the  uttermost  seas  or  the  nethermost  depths 
— to  Him,  the  God,  who,  if  it  pleases  Him,  tram- 
ples upon  the  heart  we  love  best  in  the  world  and 
tortures  it  beneath  His  foot  until  it  is  once  more 
the  dust  of  which  He  created  it. 

'With  such  thoughts  did  Niels  Lyhne  pray  to 
God,  and,  casting  himself  helplessly  before  the 
throne  of  heaven,  acknowledge  that  His  was  the 
power  and  His  alone. 

'But  the  child's  sufferings  continued.'1 

1  Niels  Lyhne,  by  J.  P.  Jacobsen,  ch.  xiii.  (E.  T.,  Siren 
Voices,  p.  261).  Jacobsen  was  a  Danish  writer  of  remarkable 
genius  who  died  of  consumption  in  1885  at  tne  age  °f  thirty- 
six,  leaving  to  literature  only  a  fragment  of  what  he  might 
have  done. 


78  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

This  is  from  a  novel,  but  it  is  not  fiction. 
There  is  our  problem  of  pain  in  the  concrete, 
and  before  it  our  line  talk  about  the  moral 
character  of  suffering  and  about  the  great  law 
of  human  solidarity  are  a  kind  of  blasphemy. 
The  cruelty — and  to  a  child — is  so  undeniable 
that  the  problem  is  unendurable.  The  mind 
which  is  sincere  is  simply  silent  before  it.  The 
philosopher's  generalisations  falter,  and  only 
the  professional  pietist,  babbling  about  all  be- 
ing for  the  best,  keeps  on  talking.  His  ob- 
servations are  highly  admirable.  But  even 
faith  is  almost  ashamed  of  them.  It  is  better 
to  say  nothing.  There  is  simply  nothing  to 
be  said. 

No,  there  is  absolutely  nothing  more  to  be 
said  about  the  facts — these  brutal  and  des- 
perate facts.  And  it  is  no  help  to  believe  that 
in  the  end  it  will  all  be  made  clear — to  think 
of  God  as  holding,  as  it  were  in  an  envelope, 
the  explanation  of  the  mystery  to  be  given  to 
us  some  future  day.  That  may  and  does  suf- 
fice for  some  of  the  pains  and  problems  of  life; 
but  it  does  not  suffice  when  the  sword  pierces 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         79 

the  heart  and  twists  itself  therein.  A  God 
who  is  to  be  the  explanation  of  things  is  not 
enough  here.  The  poor  father's  heart,  torn 
with  suffering  with  his  tortured  child,  has  some- 
thing in  it  greater  than  this  coldly  wise  and 
watching  Deity  with  His  final  reason  for  every- 
thing. There  is  no  light  whatever  to  be  shed 
on  such  a  problem  as  this  along  lines  such  as 
these.  The  solution  is  not  any  attempted  in- 
tellectual construction  of  the  facts,  and  not 
even  a  faith  that  God  holds  their  intellectual 
solution.  It  is  deeper  than  that.  It  is  a  new 
thought  of  God — of  God  as  love. 

How  shall  love  act  in  face  of  facts  or  suffer- 
ing such  as  have  just  been  described?  Nothing 
is  sorer  to  watch  than  to  see  a  little  child  suffer. 
All  the  love  in  the  human  heart  is  moved  to 
suffer  too.  If  this  be  nowhere  in  God,  then 
the  impassibility  of  the  Almighty  Creator  is 
a  less  noble  thing  than  the  sympathy  of  the 
impotent  creature.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand, 
God  is  not  One  who  stands  apart  from  human 
suffering,  even  though  holding  the  explanation 
of  it  in  His  hand,  but  One  who  Himself  comes 


8o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

into  it  and  shares  it,  that  were  a  thought  of 
God  upon  which  faith  could  stand  in  any 
anguish.  That  character  in  God,  that  passion 
in  God  would  be  faith's  deliverance.  It  would 
not,  I  repeat,  intellectually  answer  the  question 
of  suffering.  But  you  cannot  arraign  a  God 
who  Himself  suffers  too. 

Such  a  thought  of  God  as  this — is  it  more 
than  a  vain  and  indeed  inappropriate  phan- 
tasy? It  is  spurned  by  great  thinkers  of  old 
and  of  to-day.  We  all  know  those  lines  of 
Lucretius,  which  have  never  ceased  to  resound 
within  the  human  mind,  which  picture  Deity 
as  in  its  very  essence  unmoved,  untouched, 
untroubled — 'privata  dolore  omni,'  removed 
from  human  grief — 'semota  a  rebus  nostris,' 
remote  from  our  concerns.1  In  our  own  day, 
Dr.  Eucken  bids  us  reject  all  idea  of  a  God 
who  takes  our  misery  upon  Himself  as  'a  de- 
cidedly wrong  note.'2  Well,  there  is  little  use 
discussing  this  as  an  idea  of  poetry  or  philos- 
ophy,   ancient    or    modern.      It    is    something 

1  De  Rerum  Natura,  ii.  648-9. 

2  Truth  of  Religion,  p.  433. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         81 

quite  beyond  the  power  of  the  mind  to  project 
for  itself.  It  simply  stands  or  falls  with  the 
thought  of  God  which  is  revealed  in  the  fact 
of  Jesus  Christ.  If  in  some  most  real  sense 
God  was  in  Christ — the  Christ  who  was  ac- 
quainted with  grief,  who  bore  our  sufferings 
and  carried  our  sorrows — then  and  then  only 
does  that  thought  of  God  of  which  I  have 
spoken  take  real  shape  and  strength  in  the 
mind.  I  desire  to  remember  it  must  be  said 
with  care  and  reverence  that  God  thus  suffers 
too,  and  not  so  much  because  it  borders  on  an 
ancient  heresy — some  heresies  become  ortho- 
dox in  time — but  because  we  must  never  forget 
how  infinitely  God  transcends  our  nature.  Yet 
it  is  no  unworthy  thought  of  the  Father  of 
our  spirits  that  He  can  suffer  as  also  rejoice 
with  His  children.  But,  assuredly,  mere  think- 
ing about  life  cannot  say  it;  if  it  be  said  at  all, 
it  is  only  in  Christ. 

In  a  later  chapter  I  shall  discuss  whether 
the  view  of  Christ  involved  in  this  be  real  and 
credible.  Meanwhile  let  us  ask,  in  closing  this 
chapter,  how,  even  if  such  a  thought  of  God 


82  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

be  true,  does  it  help?  Certainly  it  does  not 
alter  the  poignant  facts.  Despite  even  this 
thought  of  God,  'the  child's  sufferings  con- 
tinued.' Yet  such  a  thought  of  God  makes  all 
the  difference.  The  difference  is  not  merely 
the  negative  one  that  it  quiets  our  murmuring 
to  see  that  supreme  One  in  the  same  case. 
This  aspect  of  it  has  been  sympathetically  ex- 
pressed by  the  pen  of  Mr.  Balfour: — 

'If  they  suffer,  did  not  He,  on  their  account, 
suffer  also?  If  suffering  falls  not  always  on  the 
most  guilty,  was  not  He  innocent?  Shall  they 
cry  aloud  that  the  world  is  ill-arranged,  when  He, 
for  their  sakes,  subjected  Himself  to  their  condr 
tions?'1 

This  is  true,  yet  it  is  but  a  little  of  the  truth. 
Something  far  deeper  and  tenderer  and  more 
experimental  is  needed  when  the  soul  is  really 
in  straits.  It  is  not  merely  that  Christ,  too, 
had  His  pains  to  endure;  it  is  that  He  bears 
our  pains  with  us.  And  thus  the  sufferer  dis- 
traught with  his  own  agonies  or  those  of  his 
loved  ones  (which  are  harder  to  bear  and  far 
harder   to    understand   than   his    own)    is,    to 

1  A.  J.  Balfour's  Foundations  of  Belief,  p.  352. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         S3 

quote  the  fine  words  of  the  spiritual  mind  of 
Dora  Greenwell,  'met  from  the  eyes  and  brows 
of  Him  who  was  indeed  acquainted  with  grief, 
by  a  look  of  solemn  recognition  such  as  may 
pass  between  friends  who  have  endured  be- 
tween them  some  strange  and  sacred  sorrow 
and  are  through  it  united  in  a  bond  that  cannot 
he  broken' 1  I  shall  not  multiply  words  about 
this.  It  is  not  by  eloquent  writing  upon  it  that 
it  is  brought  home  to  the  soul  as  spiritual  truth. 
It  is  only  as  you  take  your  cross  of  agony  to 
His  Cross,  who  means  for  us  the  very  heart 
of  God,  and  there  learn — even  with  the  sword 
piercing  your  life  or  the  life  of  your  dearest — 
to  know  God  nearer  than  ever  before.  This 
is  what  makes  all  the  difference  for  faith.  It 
does  not  explain  the  mystery.  It  does  not  re- 
move the  facts.  But  it  makes  all  the  difference 
if  we  hear  in  the  darkness — and  speaking  with 
that  peculiar  tenderness  which  a  loving  voice 
takes  into  its  tone  in  the  darkness — a  voice 
saying: 

'O  heart   I  made,  a  heart  beats  here.' 
1  Colloquia  Cruris,  p.  14. 


84  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

Then — not  till  then — can  we  accept  God's  will 
even  at  the  worst.  Indeed,  we  would  not  have, 
for  ourselves  or  for  others,  anything  else  than 
the  will  of  that  God  who  feels  and  suiters  too. 
His  will  is  indeed — even  when  it  is  uttered  pain 
— our  peace. 

Some  one  will  say  that  people  often  imagine 
in  the  dark  that  they  hear  voices.  That  is 
true,  and  I  repeat  we  must  discuss  in  a  future 
chapter  whether  such  a  faith  can  be  verified 
in  the  cold  daylight  of  historical  criticism. 
Meanwhile  on  this  I  shall  say  but  one  word. 
Does  not  every  one  of  us  practically  regard 
the  suffering  love  of  Jesus  Christ  as  indeed 
the  love  and  sympathy  of  God  Himself?  For 
why  is  it  that  we  do  not  find  here  the  final 
arraignment  of  the  divine  goodness?  Why  is 
it  that  this  unparalleled  suffering,  unjustly  in- 
flicted on  the  most  innocent,  does  not  make  us 
more  than  ever  unbelievers?  Why  does  it  not 
awaken  tears  of  pity  and  a  torrent  of  protest 
against  God?  Because — this  is  the  one  reason 
— dimly  we  all  discern  in  this  passion  more  than 
a  human  tragedy.     Because  we  feel,  however 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  PAIN         85 

falteringly,  that  here,  in  a  way  we  cannot  de- 
fine but  cannot  dismiss,  is  the  love  of  God 
suffering  for  and  with  men.  That  is  the  final 
word  on  the  problem  of  pain :  it  is  enough 
for  faith. 

And  so  to  conclude  we  may,  I  think,  say  this 
about  it  all.  We  may  say  that  the  mystery  of 
suffering,  while  difficult  and,  to  many  minds, 
oppressive,  still  is  not  a  problem  which  in  the 
end  silences  faith,  and  for  this  reason,  that  the 
more  deeply  we  look  into  pain  in  human  life 
the  more  we  can  find  God  in  it.  We  find  in 
it  God's  moral  purpose  and  work  in  character; 
we  find  God's  great  and  just  laws  of  life  be- 
tween man  and  man;  we  find,  at  the  last  and 
worst,  God  suffering  too.  We  cannot  explain 
pain,  but  if  we  thus  find  God  within  it,  then 
faith  is  not  put  to  shame. 

But,  behind  this  problem,  is  a  darker  one  of 
which  we  cannot  speak  thus. 


Ill 

THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT 


'What  you  are  now  saying,'  I  suggested,  'seems  to 
imply  the  existence  of  two  original  and  almost  equal 
powers.     It  sounds  very  like  Manichaeism.' 

'So,'  returned  he  quietly,  'I  have  been  sometimes  told, 
but  the  days  for  me  are  long  past  (if  indeed  for  me 
they  ever  existed)  when  a  word  or  a  name  could  alarm 
me.  I  have  learned  to  hold  with  Newman  that  one  of 
the  surest  marks  of  a  living  faith  is  its  disregard  of 
consequences,  and  among  all  Butler's  deep  sayings  there 
are  no  words  which  I  endorse  more  fully  than  those  in 
which  he  bids  us  know  that,  if  a  truth  be  once  estab- 
lished, objections  are  nothing — the  one  being  founded 
on  our  knoweldge,  the  other  on  our  ignorance.' 

DORA  GREEN  WELL. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT 

This  age,  which  is  sensitive  to  the  spectacle  of 
suffering,  is  one  which,  in  many  respects,  hardly 
realises  sin  as  a  problem  at  all.  Sir  Oliver 
Lodge  tells  us  that  'the  higher  man  of  to-day 
is  not  worrying'  about  it.  Well,  if  this  be  the 
right  point  of  view  it  must  be  remarked,  in  the 
first  place,  that  a  good  deal  both  of  the  teach- 
ing and  also  of  the  life  of  One  whom  we  have 
been  accustomed  to  think  of  as  the  Highest 
Man  of  any  day  was  a  mistake  or  at  least  an 
exaggeration,  and  it  seems  a  pity  that  Jesus 
should  have  died  for  sin  instead  of  simply  dis- 
missing it. 

There  is,  however,  nothing  particularly  high 
in  dealing  with  things  other  than  as  they  really 
are.  The  question  is  whether  sin  is  a  fact  of 
life,  and  a  fact  so  great  as  rightly  to  trouble 
the  conscience  and  the  mind.     If  it  is,  we  ought 

89 


9o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

to  'worry'  about  it;  to  say  of  it,  with  Renan, 
je  le  supprime  is  not  high  but  only  shallow. 
Now  it  is  an  easy  thing  to  regard  sin  as  a  not 
very  difficult  or  deadly  problem  for  either  life 
or  faith  so  long  as  we  deal  with  it  in  an  ab- 
stract way.  Nothing,  indeed,  is  easier  than  to 
make  a  number  of  facile  observations  about 
the  'negative'  element  in  existence  and  so  on, 
and  to  disguise  what  sin  is  under  these  semi- 
philosophical  generalities.  Here,  again,  it  is 
so  easy  to  generalise.  But  no  man  who  looks 
straight  at  the  facts  of  life — his  own  life  or 
the  life  of  the  world  of  men — can  be  content 
to  treat  the  matter  thus.  Think  for  a  little 
what  sin  is  and  what  it  does.  There  are  times 
when  not  to  worry  over  sin  seems  the  counsel  of 
everything  about  us.  On  some  fine  morning, 
when  the  sun  is  bright  and  the  air  is  fresh  and 
the  world  is  beautiful,  it  seems  morbid  even  to 
name  sin.  But,  as  a  matter  of  actual  fact,  on 
what  falsenesses  and  foulnesses  in  human 
hearts  and  lives  has  the  glorious  sun  dawned, 
what  base  and  bad  lives  will  breathe  its  divine 
air,  what  scenes  of  shame  and  unkindness  and 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT  91 

cruelty  and  wickedness  will  be  enacted  even  on 
this  day  of  beauty.  This  is  not  morbid  imagin- 
ing; it  is  the  barest  fact.  Not  to  worry  over  it 
is  no  sign  of  height  of  mind;  certainly  to  feel 
the  burden  of  it  is  no  sign  of  a  low  mind. 
Every  man  with  a  heart  and  a  conscience  knows 
that  the  problem  here  is  the  darkest  problem 
of  the  world's  history  and  also  the  final  issue 
within  his  own  being. 

Moreover,  to  faith  it  presents  a  problem 
which  is  peculiarly  acute — one  much  more  acute 
than  any  problem  of  pain.  It  is  not  for  noth- 
ing that  the  facts  of  sin  are  so  little  faced  and 
that  the  topic  is  so  often  dealt  with  in  evasive 
generalities.  For  to  any  faith — philosophic  as 
well  as  religious — it  is  unwelcome  to  a  degree 
which  makes  the  mind  want  to  do  anything 
rather  than  face  it  as  it  really  is.  Why  this  is 
so  can  be  stated  in  a  sentence.  In  the  problem 
of  pain,  despite  many  and  great  perplexities, 
we  found  that  the  more  we  pressed  into  it  the 
more  was  it  possible  to  discern  God  in  it.  But 
the  more  we  look  into  sin  the  more  impossible 
do  we  find  it  to  associate  it  with  God.    Its  very 


92  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

definition  in  the  conscience  is  something  'against 
Thee.'  In  short,  suffering,  while  a  difficult  fact, 
is  yet  a  divine  fact;  but  sin  is  not  less  than  the 
one  atheistic  fact  in  the  world. 

One  is  well  aware  how  hopelessly  orthodox 
this  sounds  to  the  philosophic  ear.  A  philos- 
ophy of  evil  to-day  hardly  calls  itself  such 
unless  it  treats  sin  as  a  phase  in  the  moral 
evolution,  and  as  thus  a  part — an  intelligible 
and  necessary  part — of  the  scheme  of  things. 
I  think  I  may  claim  to  be  not  insensible  to  the 
attraction  of  this  as  a  system  of  thought.  But 
the  reason  why  I,  for  one,  remain  hopelessly 
orthodox  on  this  topic  is  simply  that  I  have 
never  been  able  to  find  in  this  way  of  thinking 
any  real  statements  of  the  facts  about  sin  as 
these  actually  exist  in  the  world  without  or 
within.  I  read  Spinoza  on  evil.1  As  a  struc- 
ture of  philosophy  his  system  is  infinitely  more 
attractive  to  the  mind  of  any  one  at  all  in- 
fluenced by  the  idea  of  the  philosophic  demand 
for  synthesis  than  is,  say,  Augustine's.  But  in 
Spinoza  are  hardly  any  of  the  facts  about  sin 

1  Ethics,  pt.  iv.  passim. 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT  93 

as  I  know  them  in  life,  while  in  Augustine  these 
are  there  in  all  their  intractable  truth.  Spinoza 
and  Augustine,  discussing  the  topic,  are  like 
men  not  only  of  differing  views  but  inhabiting 
different  planets.  The  question  is  which  view 
is  truer  to  the  facts  of  this  planet,  not  which 
is  more  acceptable  to  the  philosophic  temper. 
It  is  from  this  point  of  view  I  shall  consider 
the  matter  in  this  chapter,  which  must  be,  I  am 
afraid,  not  such  a  light  one  as  some  modern 
theologians  are  able  to  produce  even  on  this 
dark  topic. 

Philosophers  of  moral  evil  such  as  I  have 
indicated  vary  in  method  and  in  terminology, 
but  all  agree  in  one  essential  feature.  Whether 
metaphysical  or  dialectical  or  materialistic,  they 
agree  in  treating  sin  as  a  phenomenon  of  the 
natural  world.  Nature  is  the  supreme  category 
of  the  modern  mind.  Man  is  part  of  this  na- 
ture. Everything  in  man,  including  the  moral 
phenomena  of  what  is  called  sin,  is  regarded 
as  in  and  of  the  system  and  order  of  the  natural 
sphere.  Sin,  in  other  words,  is  and  must  be 
natural.     That  is  not  to  say  it  is  not  to  be 


94  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

resisted  and  transcended;  but  it  is  to  say  it  is 
a  fact  of  natural  existence  and  not  absurd  or 
an  anomaly.  Thus  the  eminent  English  scien- 
tific philosopher  whom  I  have  named — and  for 
whose  work  in  imbuing  a  thoroughly  scientific 
outlook  on  the  universe  with  profoundly  spir- 
itual conceptions  I  wish  to  speak  in  terms  of 
sincere  and  respectful  appreciation — says  sin 
is  'akin  to  dirt,  to  disease  and  weeds;'  and 
again,  that  'the  contrast  between  good  and  evil 
can  be  well  illustrated  by  the  contrast  between 
heat  and  cold,'  adding  'there  is  nothing  evil 
about  cold  itself.'1 

Let  us  examine  this  by  the  standard  not  of 
orthodoxy  but  of  experience.  Has  it  any  kind 
of  support  in  what  in  our  own  lives  we  find 
sin  to  be?  Let  a  man  with  a  clear  mind  and 
a  candid  conscience  examine  some  sin  in  his 
life.  He  has,  for  example,  told  a  base  lie,  or 
committed  an  act  of  sensuality,  or  has  been 
unkind  and  selfish.  To  tell  this  man  that  his 
bad  conscience  for  his  having  been  untrue  or 

1  Sir  Oliver  Lodge's  Man  and  the   Universe,  p.  242 ;  Sub- 
stance of  Faith  allied  with  Science,  p.  48. 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT  95 

impure  or  unloving  may  be  'well  illustrated'  by 
his  feeling  cold  on  some  winter  day  is  just  to 
trifle  with  and  even  mock  everything  real  in 
his  moral  being.  The  comparison  is  absolutely 
irrelevant.  You  might  just  as  well  compare 
his  sin  to  the  Differential  Calculus  or  the  Battle 
of  Waterloo  or  Tariff  Reform  or  any  other 
thing  your  fancy  fixes  on.  These  many  natural 
facts  have  simply  no  point  of  contact  with  the 
moral  facts  of  experience  in  a  man  who  has 
sinned.  Indeed,  if  we  take  them  to  the  test  of 
some  classical  example  of  the  sense  of  sin  their 
irrelevance  reaches  the  point  of  indecency.  I 
shall  not  take  any  strained  or  morbid  cases  of 
what  the  author  of  the  Varieties  of  Religious 
Experience1  calls  'the  sick  soul.'  I  shall  take 
two  of  the  shortest  and  simplest  and  sanest 
confessions  of  sin  possible — utterances  which 
can  be  echoed  in  any  honest  experience.  Take 
the  psalmist's  'Against  Thee,  Thee  only,  have 
I  sinned;'  then  say   (if  you  can  get  your  lips 

1  The  fault  of  James's  interesting  and  valuable  book  is  that 
it  deals  too  much  with  extreme  cases  and  does  not  build 
enough  on  the  data  of  normal  religious  experience.  Truth  is 
best  found  on  the  highways  of  life. 


96  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

to  say  it)  that  a  good  illustration  of  this  and 
similar  utterances  in  the  fifty-first  Psalm  would 
be  when  a  man,  in  the  heats  and  chills  of  a 
fever,  says  his  temperature  sank  last  night 
below  normal.  Take  the  apostle  who  bowed 
his  head  in  shame  before  Jesus  with  the  words: 
'Depart    from   me,    for   I    am   a    sinful   man, 

0  Lord;'  then  say  (again  if  you  can)  that  this 
is,  so  to  speak,  as  if  some  one  who  had  fallen 
into  a  filthy  bog  should  tell  a  lady  in  a  white 
dress  that  she  must  not  come  too  near  to  him. 

1  am  not  going  to  waste  space  in  arguing  about 
this.  A  man's  experience  needs  no  arguments 
to  show  that  the  kind  of  'sin'  which  is  illustrated 
by  the  thermometer  or  akin  to  dirt  is  not  in  the 
remotest  degree  like,  is  not  in  the  same  world 
with,  the  sin  he  knows  in  his  heart  and  con- 
science. It  is  purely  a  fancy  article  of  a  phi- 
losophy which  has  forgotten  the  facts  of  life. 

This,  then,  is  the  first  thing  which  experience 
tells  us  about  sin,  that  it  is  a  phenomenon  not 
of  what  we  call  the  natural,  but  of  another 
class  and  order  which  we  call  the  moral.  Now, 
certainly,  the  natural  world  and  the  moral  are 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT  97 

not  to  be  isolated  from  one  another.  They  are 
related  to  one  another  and  touch  one  another. 
Particularly  do  they  meet  in  man,  who  is  a 
member  of  both.  But  they  must  not  be  con- 
fused with  one  another,  nor  are  the  categories 
of  the  one  to  be  applied  to  the  other.  The 
moral  realm  possesses — or  rather,  one  should 
say,  is  constituted  by — one  fundamental  cate- 
gory, of  which  nature  simply  knows  nothing. 
The  difference  between  right  and  wrong,  which 
is  the  constituent  category  of  morals,  is  a  differ- 
ence, which  is  destroyed  when  it  is  classed  with 
the  difference,  say,  between  300  and  900  Fah- 
renheit. It  is  a  distinction  absolute  within  itself, 
not  variable  with  terms  and  seasons.  It  is  to 
this  absolute  moral  realm  that  the  phenomenon 
of  sin  belongs,  and  any  discussion  of  it  which 
treats  it  as  a  phenomenon  of  a  relative  and 
neutral  world  is  simply  not  a  discussion  of  sin 
at  all. 

One  other  way  of  treating  the  topic  on  the 
part  of  those  whom  I  am  inclined  to  call  the 
fanciful  theologians — by  whom  I  mean  those 
who  are  out  of  touch  with  the  facts  or  the 


98  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

subject— I  may  more  briefly  mention.  They 
tell  us  that  sin  is  not  so  much  that  which  ought 
not  to  be  as  that  which  is  not.  It  is  a  mere 
'negative,'  a  'not  being,'  while  good  is  positive 
being.  What  is,  or  was,  called  'the  New 
Theology'  is  fond  of  such  phrases,  and  one 
exponent  of  it — a  preacher  not  without  genius 
in  his  spirit  if  only  he  could  be  delivered  from 
the  misapprehension  of  thinking  it  a  genius  for 
metaphysics — seems  inclined  to  adopt  the 
aphorism  that  'the  Devil  is  a  vacuum.'1  Well, 
I  am  not  competent  to  describe  the  devil,  of 
whose  being  I  know  as  little  as  even  a  neo- 
theologian  does.  But  I  know  something  of 
myself.  And  to  tell  me  then  sin  within  me  is 
a  'non-existent'  is  a  kind  of  sorry  jest.  The 
bad  in  me  is  as  real  as  the  good.  I  apply  to 
it  every  available  test  of  reality,  and  find  it 
existent  in  everything  which  is  most  real  in  my 
being — thought,  affection,  will,  habit,  character. 
Indeed,  if  I  do  not  take  care,  it  will  become 
my  most  essential  self,  and  I  may  be  a  bad 
man  in  every  sense  in  which  I  am  a  man  at  all. 

1  The  New  Theology,  by  the  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell,  pp.  43-4. 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT  99 

And  around  me  in  the  world  I  see — not  that 
I  judge  them,  but  I  see  them — bad  men  as 
distinctly  as  good  men,  and  badness  possessing 
all  the  reality  which  any  kind  of  life  does.  If 
any  philosophy  says  sin  is  a  'non-existent,'  that 
is  a  saying  illuminative  not  of  sin  but  only  of 
the  philosophy  which  is  so  far  out  of  touch 
with  life  as  to  say  it. 

On  this  and  things  like  this  I  cannot  longer 
dwell.  We  must  pass  to  the  problem  which 
confronts  us  if  we  reject  such  facile  theories 
of  evil  and  face  it  as  it  really  is — the  atheistic 
fact  in  the  world. 

Do  not  these  very  words  proclaim  the  hope- 
lessness of  the  problem?  What  can  faith  say 
when  confronted  with  a  fact  the  very  definition 
of  which  is  that  it  is  'against  God' — a  fact, 
therefore,  which  cannot  be  made  harmonious 
with  God?  This  is  why  there  cannot  be  a 
rational  philosophy  of  sin.  All  attempts  to 
explain  sin  end  in  something  quite  different — 
the  explaining  of  it  away  into  something  else. 
There  is  a  distinction  between  these  two  results 
which  many  people  who  write  on  this  subject 


ioo  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

seem  not  able  to  appreciate.  But  while  a  final 
philosophy  of  sin,  from  its  very  terms,  is  im- 
possible, a  theodicy  in  face  of  sin  may  be  pos- 
sible; and  it  is  this  which  faith  is  entitled  to 
require.  It  may  seem  worse  than  useless  to 
touch  on  so  profound  a  question  within  the 
limits  of  what  is  left  of  this  chapter;  but,  after 
all,  it  is  of  the  greatest  themes  that  it  is  true 
that  many  words  cannot  say  more  than  few. 
I  do  not  wish  to  get  involved  in  speculative 
coils  on  the  subject;  it  is  available  facts  about 
sin  which  most  demand  attention.  For  this 
reason  I  shall  deal  briefly  with  the  highly 
speculative  problem  of  what  is  called  the  divine 
permission  of  moral  evil.  The  main  positions 
of  a  philosophic  theodicy  as  to  this  may  be 
stated  thus.  If  we  assume  God  as  not  the 
Infinite  Thing  but  as  Supreme  Moral  Person- 
ality— and  this  is  at  this  point  legitimately 
assumed,  for  only  on  this  assumption  does  any 
need  for  a  theodicy  about  evil  arise — then  the 
only  world  really  worthy  of  Him  and  really 
expressive  of  His  true  Being  and  Character 
would  be  a  world  which  is  more  than  a  vast 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT         101 

mechanical  toy  but  is  a  world  of  moral  persons. 
The  point  is  stated  thus  in  Professor  Ward's 
notable  Giftord  Lecture:  'God  is  Love.  And 
what  must  that  world  be  that  is  worthy  of 
such  love?  The  only  worthy  object  of  love  is 
just  love.  It  must  then  be  a  world  that  can 
love  God.'1  It  is  in  the  light  of  this  considera- 
tion that  philosophy  considers  this  problem  of 
the  permission  of  sin.  Would  it  not  have  been 
to  destroy  such  a  world  if  the  possibility  of 
not  loving  God  had  been  shut  out  by  the  pre- 
determination of  the  Creator?  Would  not  that 
have  been  the  reducing  of  creation  to  (as  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  I  think,  phrases  it)  'what  it 
was  on  the  sixth  day' — to  a  world,  that  is, 
emptied  of  moral  agents  whose  history  is  not 
merely  mechanical  and  physical  but  is  a  history 
of  ethical  and  spiritual  freedom?  Certainly 
this  would  have  been  to  prevent  sin;  but  would 
it  not  also  have  prevented  love  and  all  mo- 
rality? For,  to  quote  Professor  Ward  again — 
I  quote  him  because  he  does  not  discuss  the 
theme  in  the  merely  theological  interest — 'love 

1  The  Realm  of  Ends,  ch.  xx.  p.  453. 


102  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

is  free :  in  a  ready-made  world,  then,  it  could 
have  no  place.'  Here  I  know  the  Pilate  in  the 
reader's  mind  will  say:  'What  is  freedom?'  and 
will  not  stay  for  an  answer.  I  will  not  attempt 
the  answer.  What  moral  freedom  is  can 
hardly  be  analysed  or  even  defined,  because  it 
is  one  of  those  ultimate  and  final  categories 
which  are  not  reducible  to  simple  elements,  and 
of  which  we  can  only  say — as  we  say  of  right 
and,  perhaps,  beauty — Si  non  rogas,  intelligo. 
But  of  these  ultimate  and  final  categories  we 
can  say  some  things,  even  to  Pilate,  which  they 
are  not.  And  of  moral  freedom  we  can  cer- 
tainly say  that  it  does  not  mean  a  character 
which  is  good  because  it  is  deprived  of  the 
possibility  of  being  other  than  good.  So  if 
God's  world  were  to  be  a  world  of  moral  per- 
sons, it  would  seem  that  must  not  mean  a  world 
deprived  of  the  possibility  of  their  being  other 
than  good.  To  have  prevented  this  would  have 
been  to  prevent  a  moral  world  at  all — at  least 
in  any  sense  in  which  the  word  morality  has 
ethical  content  for  an  experience.  And  that 
would  be  to  prevent  a  world  expressive  of  God 
Himself. 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT         103 

This  reasoning  and  suggestion  I  merely  out- 
line, and  do  not  press  it  far.  One  should  not 
seek  to  develop  a  logical  demonstration  on  such 
a  topic.  And  I  pass  from  these  abstract  con- 
siderations to  the  more  definitely  historical 
questions  about  sin. 

The  first  historical  question  about  sin  ob- 
viously is  the  circumstances  of  its  appearance 
in  the  world,  but  to  this  it  is  impossible  to  give 
a  historical  answer.  There  is  no  available  evi- 
dence to  enable  us  to  do  so.  I  do  not  suppose 
we  shall  be  asked  to-day  in  any  seriously  edu- 
cated quarter  to  take  the  stories  in  the  opening 
chapters  of  Genesis  as  literal  history,  pro- 
foundly and  permanently  meaningful  as  they 
are;  and,  apart  from  that,  there  is  no  professed 
source  of  information  on  the  subject  anywhere. 
One  observes  a  tendency  in  some  modern 
writers  on  this  question  to  seek  evidence  from 
the  story  of  evolution.  Thus  a  recent  Hulsean 
lecturer  thinks  we  have  the  'empirical'  source 
of  sin,  and  even  necessity  for  it,  in  man's  diffi- 
culty 'of  enforcing  his  inherited  organic  nature 
to  obey  a  moral  law  which  he  has  only  gradu- 


104  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

ally  been  enabled  to  discern.'1  But  while  some 
relevant  observations  about  evil  are  suggested 
from  the  point  of  view  of  evolution,  it  seems  to 
me  that  evolution  is  the  channel  of  temptation 
rather  than  the  source  of  sin.  That  this  is 
true  is  visible  in  our  own  lives.  We  to-day  have 
just  the  difficulty  referred  to  above  of  enforcing 
an  inherited  organic  nature  to  obey  a  law  we 
have  gradually  discerned.  Every  man  who — 
to  take  no  higher  an  instance — feels  he  ought 
to  get  up  earlier  in  the  morning,  but  finds  his 
'inherited  organic  nature'  unwilling  to  begin 
doing  it,  knows  this  'difficulty.'  Yet  surely  we 
know  it  is  'one  thing  to  be  tempted'  from  old 
habits  of  the  body  and  'another  thing  to  fall' 
(or,  in  the  case  suggested,  not  to  rise!). 
Moreover,  as  bearing  even  on  temptation,  this 
association  of  the  origination  of  evil  with  the 
organic  nature  which  man  has  inherited  is  in- 
adequate and  indeed  inappropriate,  because 
man's  most  characteristic  sins  do  not  arise  out 
of  the  animal  at  all.    Such  sins  as  ambition  or 

1Tennant's  Origin  and  Propagation  of  Sin   (Hulsean  Lec- 
ture for  1901-2),  p.  81. 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT         105 

pride  or  fraud  (which  Dante  calls  'man's  pe- 
culiar vice1)  are  not,  so  to  speak,  a  servile 
uprising  in  human  nature,  but  are  the  crimes 
of  the  royalty  of  reason  itself.  For  these  and 
other  considerations,  I  feel  that  the  pursuit  of 
this  line  by  which  the  origin  of  sin  is  sought 
under  suggestions  from  the  story  of  evolution 
does  not  help  us  very  much.  The  real  origin 
of  sin  lies  in  something  deeper  than  the  clinging 
garment  of  our  physical  descent. 

If,  then,  in  the  records  neither  of  sacred 
narrative  nor  of  physical  evolution  we  find  the 
clue  we  need,  where  shall  we  seek  it?  The 
answer  is  in  the  grande  profundum  of  person- 
ality. Let  us  here  avoid  all  darkening  with 
verbiage,  for  here  certainly  the  remark  made 
a  moment  ago  is  true,  that  many  words  cannot 
say  more  than  few.  The  one  thing  to  say  is 
this.  Man  is  an  ego;  sin  is  the  ego  become 
the  egoist.  A  beast  cannot  be  an  egoist;  it  may 
seek  the  satisfaction  of  this  or  that  desire,  but 
it  cannot  seek  itself.  A  personal  being,  know- 
ing itself  as  an  end,  seeks,  in  the  gratification 

1  Inferno,  xi.  26. 


106  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

of  its  desires,  not  merely  their  satisfaction  but 
the  satisfaction  of  the  self.  Thus  a  dog  drinks 
merely  to  slake  the  physical  sense  of  thirst;  a 
man  often  does  more  than  that,  and  drinks  on, 
long  past  the  satisfaction  of  mere  thirst,  to 
attain  some  further  satisfaction  of  himself  in 
enjoyment  or,  it  may  be,  drunkenness.  It  is 
this  false  self  which  is  the  author  of  sin.  Thus 
to  specify  it  is,  of  course,  not  to  explain  it. 
If  we  ask  what  thus  perverts  the  idea  of  the 
self  there  is  no  answer.  We  have  simply  no 
data  from  which  to  construct  an  answer.  To 
speculate  about  it  is  indeed,  in  Goethe's  phrase, 
to  be  led  about  a  barren  heath  by  an  evil  spirit. 
We  simply  do  not  know  the  deeps  of  the 
mystery  of  our  being.  We  call  ourselves  self- 
conscious — that  is,  self-knowing — but  we  are 
only  superficially  so.  There  are  in  human 
personality  great  subterranean  areas  into  which 
we  have  never  penetrated.  There  is  nothing 
to  be  ashamed  of  intellectually  in  saying  this: 
does  the  most  confident  scientist  know  any 
better  the  mystery  of  the  atom?  There  are 
places    where    it    is    philosophical    to    confess 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT  107 

ignorance  and  where  the  true  religion  is  an 
agnosticism.  And  it  is  a  part  of  true  knowl- 
edge to  know  wrhere  knowledge  stops.1 

Now,  however,  it  will  be  asked  where  is  any 
theodicy?  Is  it  simply  given  up  at  the  crucial 
point  under  the  plea  of  the  mystery  of  person- 
ality? Not  so.  For,  while  personality  is  an 
abysmal  deep  which  we  cannot  fathom,  there 
arise  out  of  it  at  least  two  clear  and  conclusive 
things  about  sin  in  relation  to  God  and  in  re- 
lation to  ourselves,  and  these  are  sufficient,  if 
not  to  complete  a  theodicy — they  are,  I  shall 
say  presently,  not  sufficient  for  that — at  least 
to  make  the  arraignment  of  God  for  sin  untrue 
to  the   facts. 

1  The  theological  student  who  wishes  to  ponder  further  over 
this  matter  should  assimilate  (which  is  more  than  merely 
read)  the  fundamental  position  of  Augustine,  which  is  that 
man's  whole  nature  is  made  for  God — Fecisti  nos  ad  Te — and 
in  its  right  state  only  in  continued  relatedness  to  Him.  This 
applies  to  the  self-conscious  being's  idea  of  itself  as  well  as  to 
anything  else.  Sin  originates  in  the  self-conscious  personality, 
which  can  say,  'I  am  I,'  saying  it  'as  though  it  were  of  him- 
self.' It  is  thus  a  defectio — arising  not  out  of  the  flesh  but 
from  pride — or,  as  Augustine  says  of  the  fallen  angels,  a  'not 
sticking  fast  unto  God.'  The  value  of  this  idea  of  the  sinful 
will  as  'deficient'  appears  when  Augustine  comes  to  describe 
grace,  which  is  thus  a  restoring  of  man,  including  the  will, 


108  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

One  is  this.  It  is  something  so  intimately 
associated  with  the  moral  personality  that  it 
may  be  best  stated  in  personal  terms  and  even 
in  the  first  person.  The  surest  fact  about  sin 
in  my  life  is  just  that  my  sin  is  my  sin.  It  may 
have  circumstances  and  conditions  which  are 
not  mine,  but  it  becomes  sin  in  my  conscience 
because  and  when  it  is  mine.  Of  course,  one 
is  aware  that  the  sense  of  this  is  dimmed  and 
even  denied  for  the  modern  mind  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  such  forces  in  life  as  that  of 
heredity,  which  apparently  mortgage  life,  even 
moral  life,  so  heavily  and  sum  it  up  as  nothing 
more  than  a  resultant  of  determined  conditions. 
Now  this  'given'  element  in  life  is  not  only 
indisputably    true    but    is    also    an    invaluable 

to  its  right  and  native  state  of  relatedness  to  God.  It  does  not 
thereby  abrogate  freedom  but,  on  the  contrary,  renews  it,  and 
leads  it  not  to  a  mere  non-moral  neutrality  of  choice  but  to 
its  true  'law  of  liberty,'  which  says  not  'I  can  do  what  I  like' 
but  'I  love  Thy  law.'  This  idea  of  rational  and  moral,  as 
opposed  to  a  merely  indifferent,  freedom  is  seen  in  a  man  of 
long-stablished  nobility  of  character,  of  whom  we  say  he 
'could  not'  do  some  base  deed,  and  yet  not  meaning  that  by 
his  character  he  has  forfeited  moral  freedom.  I  write  this 
note  to  invite  a  deeper  study  of  the  greatest  of  all  doctors  on 
this  high  topic. 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT         109 

truth;  I  asserted  it  and  built  upon  it  in  the 
previous  chapter  when  showing  the  bearing  of 
solidarity  on  the  problem  of  the  injustice  of 
human  suffering.  But  it  is  not  the  whole  truth. 
Man's  life,  which  certainly  has  its  roots  in 
nature,  has  thus  an  inheritance,  physical,  men- 
tal, moral,  for  which  he  is  not  responsible ;  but 
when  you  have  summed  up  all  the  elements  in 
that  you  have  not  yet  summed  up  the  life  of 
man.  In  life,  as  indeed  in  everything  which  is 
organic,  the  whole  is  more  than  the  sum  of  the 
parts;  two  and  two  are  here  more  than  four. 
And  no  man  can  sum  up  his  moral  being  by 
piecing  together  various  given  parts;  after  this 
is  done,  he  confronts  the  result  with  something 
more,  which  is  just  himself.  Responsibility  is 
the  assertion  that  our  moral  acts  are  the  acts 
of  this  self,  and  not  simply  of  an  addition  sum 
of  figures  dictated  by  this  and  that  in  the  con- 
ditions of  life.  It  is  here,  then,  that  my  sin 
is  my  sin.  This  is  the  confession  of  the  heart 
of  man  before  sin  in  all  ages.  The  writer  of 
the  fifty-first  Psalm  did  not  know  the  doctrine 
of  heredity  in  its  modern  scientific  form,  but  he 


no  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

knew  the  essential  fact  of  it  when  he  wrote: 
'Behold,  I  was  shapen  in  iniquity;  and  in  sin 
did  my  mother  conceive  me;'  yet  because  he 
knew  also,  if  not  philosophically  at  least  mor- 
ally and  practically,  a  self  deeper  than  all  that, 
he  said  too:  'I  acknowledge  my  transgressions: 
and  my  sin  is  ever  before  me.'  And  so  says 
the  conscience  of  every  honest  man.  Here  we 
have,  indeed,  the  clearest  and  most  authentic 
facts  about  moral  life  and  moral  responsibility 
— that  our  life  is  something  more  than  a  sum 
of  innumerable  constituent  conditions,  and  that 
in  that  something  more,  which  is  our  self,  sin 
becomes  ours.  No  man  gets  past  the  one  fact 
with  permission  of  true  philosophy,  or  past  the 
other  without  violence  to  his  conscience. 

But  this  hardly  ends  the  matter.  For  it  may 
be  admitted  that  sin  is  our  sin,  and  yet  the  real 
responsibility  for  it  still  lies  on  the  Author  of 
our  being,  who  has  made  us  what  we  are,  and 
we  are  not  to  be  blamed  for  following  our 
nature.  Here  emerges  to  contravene  this  an- 
other fact  of  life — that  sin  is  not  our  true 
nature.     It  is  difficult  to  see  this  in  the  general. 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT  in 

The  universality  of  moral  evil  in  humanity — 
One  excepted — leads  our  minds  to  accept  sin  as 
the  normal  thing  and  the  sinless  One  as  ab- 
normal. But,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  Wr  life' 
which  is,  as  Byron  cried, 

'a    false    nature — 'tis    not    in 
The  harmony  of  things.'1 

And  that  this  is  true  appears,  I  think,  when- 
ever the  honest  and  healthy  soul  puts  it  to  the 
practical  test  of  life.  Let  us  not  look  at  it  as 
a  general  and  abstract  proposition;  there  it 
sounds  unreal.  But  take  not  life  at  large  but 
some  place  in  our  own  life  where  are  opposing 
each  other,  on  the  one  hand,  the  call  of  some 
evil  lust  and,  on  the  other,  the  call  of  the  sinless 
Christ.  Where,  within  that  area,  does  the 
honest  and  healthy  soul  see  its  truer  nature? 
Not  in  sin.  Well,  if  that  sin  is  not  my  true  life 
in  that  particular  place,  neither  is  it  the  true 
life  of  humanity  at  large.  Sin  is  not  our  nature. 
Mr.  Chesterton's  answer  to  the  question  of 
the  meaning  of  the  Fall  is  exactly  correct,  'that 

1  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage,  iv.  126. 


ii2  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

whatever  I  am,  I  am  not  myself.'1  Sin  is — 
and  here  is  a  most  important  point  not  for 
practical  life  only  but  for  our  whole  philos- 
ophy of  religion — the  anti-natural.  This  is 
one  reason  why — to  anticipate  for  a  moment 
the  topic  of  the  next  chapter — there  is  need  for 
and  reason  in  a  supernatural  to  meet  it. 

Here  then  are  two  things  which  emerge  clear 
out  of  the  unplumbed  depth  of  personality,  that 
our  sin  is  our  sin  and  that  it  is  not  our  true 
nature.  This  does  not  mean  that  we  can  al- 
ways fix  guilt  on  the  individual.  No  one  can 
look  at  life,  no  one  can  enter  into  the  story  of 
a  sinning  soul,  no  one  can  read  such  a  play  as 
Mr.  Galsworthy's  Silver  Box  and  much  else  in 
modern  literature,  without  feeling  poignantly 
how  sin  is  more  than  individual  and  how 
ravelled  is  the  web  of  human  responsibility. 
What  has  been  said  in  the  immediately  fore- 
going paragraphs  certainly  does  not  mean  that 
we  are  to  judge  one  another.  What  it  means 
is  that  we  are  not  cheaply  and  untruly  to  ar- 
raign God.     Such  arraignment  has  sometimes 

1  Orthodoxy,  p.  292. 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT         113 

a  plausibility  of  a  superficial  kind  which  easily 
lends  itself  to  a  would-be  bold  blasphemy.  A 
well-known  quatrain  says: — 

'Oh,  Thou,  who  Man  of  baser  Earth  didst  make, 
And  ev'n  with  Paradise  devise  the  Snake; 

For  all  the  Sin  wherewith  the  Face  of  Man 
Is  blackened,  Man's  forgiveness  give — and  take!'1 

I  have  heard  this  described  as  'tremendous.1 
But  nothing  is  tremendous  which  is  not  true. 

If  then  these  be  the  facts  emerging  out  of 
the  abyss  of  personality,  we  may  return  to  the 
general  position  that  they  do  not  drive  faith 
from  its  hold  on  God  despite  the  insoluble 
elements  in  the  problem  of  evil.  Facts  remain 
facts  even  though  they  are  surrounded  by  an 
impenetrable  darkness;  we  may  therefore  not 
unjustifiably  maintain  that  the  available  data 
of  our  moral  being  do  not  deny  but  rather  up- 
hold the  divine  character  even  in  face  of  the 
enigma  of  sin  in  the  world.  I  think  we  can 
adhere  to  this.  But  it  is  impossible  to  find  it 
very  convincing.     It  is  impossible  not  to  feel 

1  Rubdiydt  of  Omar  Khayyam,  lxxxi. 


ii4  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

how  inadequate  it  is  when  it  is  offered  as  all 
that  can  be  said  in  God's  name  in  face  of  the 
actual  realities  of  the  appalling  mess  (if  I  may 
call  it  so)  which  sin  has  made  in  the  world, 
and  before  the  degradation  and  disgrace  and 
despair  of  the  lives  of  men  because  of  it.  As 
in  the  case  of  pain,  we  were  in  the  end  brought 
up  against  the  cruel  concrete  facts  of  what  pain 
actually  is  and  does,  and  realised  that,  after  all 
our  philosophical  comments  on  the  subject,  the 
sufferers  remain,  so  here,  when  we  have  talked 
at  large  about  a  philosophy  of  evil,  sinners  re- 
main— souls  soaked  through  with  lusts,  doing 
the  deeds  of  iniquity  daily,  living  for  sin  and 
dying  in  it.  I  took  a  page  from  a  novel  to 
help  us  realise  how  cruel  pain  is,  but  no  novel 
ever  painted  the  badness  of  sin.  Here  let  men 
look  steadily  into  their  own  hearts  and  upon 
their  own  lives;  I  do  not  think  they  will  write 
down  the  result  verbatim  on  the  page  of  any 
book.  This  is  the  real  problem  of  sin,  and  it 
comes  home  to  the  conscience  as  really  as  some 
physical  agony  may  come  home  to  the  flesh. 
To  offer  to  a  world  or  a  soul  that  cries  out 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT  115 

'What  must  I  do  to  be  saved?'  the  thesis  of 
a  theodicy  about  a  world  of  free  and  moral 
persons  is  no  better  than  to  prate  to  a  man  in 
agony  of  body  or  mind  that  all  is  for  the  best. 
Honestly,  when  one  begins  to  think  what  sin 
really  is  in  life — in  my  life  and  yours  and 
that  of  the  whole  world — were  it  not  better 
to  have  left  the  subject  alone  unless  there  is 
more  to  say  than  this? 

Here  we  are  precisely  at  the  same  point  as 
that  to  which  we  were  led  up  at  the  close  of 
the  previous  chapter.  When  we  found  there 
that  no  more  was  to  be  said  by  philosophy 
about  the  facts  of  pain,  we  turned  towards  a 
new  thought  about  God  as — that  is,  if  the 
'acknowledgment  of  God  in  Christ'  be  true — 
Himself  entering  into  the  problem  and  suffer- 
ing too.  It  is  in  the  same  direction  that  we 
must  turn  now  when  our  philosophy  has  said  its 
say  about  sin.  Is  there  a  new  thought  of  God 
in  relation  to  sin  to  be  found  in  Christ — espe- 
cially in  the  Cross  of  Christ — if,  again,  that 
'acknowledgment'  be  true?  Certainly  we 
cannot  say  here  that  God  sins  too.      But  we 


n6  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

discern  here  the  thought  of  God  entering  into 
the  situation  which  sin  has  created  and  saving 
us  who  are  sinners.  This  is  something  far 
more  convincing  than  a  philosophical  disquisi- 
tion about  how  a  world  of  free  moral  persons 
might  sin  and  did  sin  and  yet  the  Creator  be 
justified.  What  if  God  be  not  merely  self- 
justification;  what  if  God  may  be  love?  He 
is  not  careful,  if  one  may  so  say,  to  prove  to 
us  how  He  is  not  liable  for  the  world's  sin; 
but  it  seems  He  sends  His  Son  to  seek  and  to 
save  the  lost.  And  this  is  the  unanswerable 
theodicy.  Whether  or  not  a  world  of  free 
moral  persons  who  have  sinned,  or  a  world 
emptied  of  free  moral  persons  and  thus  pre- 
served from  sin,  were  the  creation  more  worthy 
of  God,  certainly  nothing  is  or  can  be  more 
worthy  of  God  than  to  redeem  a  world  of  sin- 
ners. 'Nothing,'  as  a  father  says  (I  think  Ter- 
tullian),  'can  be  more  worthy  of  God  than 
man's  salvation.'  Than  the  Cross  of  Christ 
and  the  forgiveness  in  it,  those  who  have  seen 
God  in  it  have  never  seen  or  imagined  a  divine 
which  is  or  can  be  diviner.     Do  not  let  us  mis- 


THE  ATHEISTIC  FACT         117 

take  this.  Here  is  no  explanation  of  the  exist- 
ence of  moral  evil.  I  certainly  cannot  say  with 
a  modern  writer  that  the  Cross  'makes  sense 
of  sin'1 — a  phrase  than  which  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  invent  one  with  less  of  the  animus  of 
the  New  Testament  on  this  subject.  Could 
any  one  imagine  the  Saviour  saying  at  the  Last 
Supper:  'This  is  my  blood  shed  for  the  ra- 
tionalisation of  sin?'  No,  redemption  does  not 
make  'sense  of  sin;'  it  does  not  and  cannot 
make  sin  to  be  other  than  what  it  is.  But  it 
makes  the  character  of  God  glorious  as  we 
had  never  seen  it  before.  The  Cross  is  not 
a  philosophy  of  evil,  but  it  is,  I  say  again,  the 
unanswerable  theodicy.  It  is  the  theodicy  of 
heaven  as  the  apostolic  seer  depicts  it  breaking 
out  even  into  exultant  doxology: — 

'I  beheld,  and  I  heard  the  voice  of  many  angels 
round  about  the  throne  and  the  living  creatures  and 
the  elders:  and  the  number  of  them  was  ten  thou- 
sand times  ten  thousand,  and  thousands  of  thou- 
sands ; 

'Saying  with  a  loud  voice,  Worthy  is  the  Lamb 
that  was  slain  to  receive  power,  and  riches,  and 

1  Rev.  William  Temple  in  Foundation,  p.  221. 


n8  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

wisdom,  and  strength,  and  honour,  and  glory,  and 
blessing. 

'And  every  creature  which  is  in  heaven,  and  on 
the  earth,  and  under  the  earth,  and  such  as  are  in 
the  sea,  and  all  that  are  therein,  heard  I  saying, 
Blessing,  and  honour,  and  glory,  and  power  be  unto 
him  that  sitteth  upon  the  throne,  and  unto  the 
Lamb  for  ever  and  ever.'1 

Every  creature  which  is  .  .  .  on  the  earth. 
Well,  we  are  'on  the  earth;'  how  shall  we  join 
in  such  a  chorus?  Is  it  not  a  rhapsody  from 
some  higher  sphere,  of  which  we  can  only  say 
in  Faust's  words  when  he  heard  the  angels' 
choir : — 

'Zu  jenen  Spharen  wag'  ich  nicht  zu  streben 
Woher  die  holde  Nachricht  tont' ; 

or  is  it  fact  and  reality  in  this  world  in  which 
we  live  and  where — to  repeat  the  adaptation 
made  in  the  first  chapter  of  Wordsworth's  line 
— 'we  find  our  faith — or  not  at  all'  ? 

Twice  have  we  been  led  up  to  this  question. 
It  is  time  now  to  face  it. 
1  Revelation,  v.  11-13. 


IV 
THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST 


'A  Personality  which  men  could  not  have  imagined, 
a  Personality  which  must  be  historical  and  which  must 
be  divine.'  william  Robertson  smith. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST 

The  question  now  before  us  is  this:  we  have 
found  that  the  discussion  of  two  aspects  of  the 
facts  of  life  which  most  evidently  challenge 
faith — namely,  suffering  and  sin — leads  us  in 
each  case  to  the  conclusion  that  the  answer  to 
the  problems  which  they  present  is  in  the  end 
only  to  be  found  if  God  Himself  can  be  thought 
of  as  personally  loving  and  saving  suffering 
and  sinful  man.  Now  is  such  a  thought  based 
on  reality?  Has  such  a  faith  any  fact  to  stand 
upon  which  can  stand  against  the  indubitable 
realities  of  suffering  and  sin?  This  is  our 
question.  It  has  already  been  indicated,  or 
rather  assumed,  that  the  only  fact  upon  which 
this  faith  can  stand  is  the  fact  of  Jesus  Christ; 
but  perhaps  this  should  not  be  at  once  taken 
for  granted,    and  therefore  I   shall  begin  by 

121 


122  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

inquiring  whether  in  nature  or  human  nature 
there  is  anything  which  will  satisfy  our  quest. 
I  think  it  does  not  need  a  long  argument  to 
show  that  a  gospel  of  a  personally  loving  and 
saving  God  cannot  be  based  on  the  general 
phenomena  of  nature.  This  most  certainly  is 
not  for  one  moment  to  say  that  nature — all 
nature — is  not  of  God.  We  are  now  quite 
beyond  that  stage  of  religious  (or  irreligious) 
thought  which  found  God  only  in  selected 
supernatural  events.  Assuredly  'Deus  in  Ma- 
china'  is  the  true  God,  and  science  which  insists 
on  this  is  witnessing  truly  for  Him.  A  man 
who  cannot  say  this  is  not  a  believer.  And  yet 
it  is  true  and  is,  indeed,  plain  that  the  per- 
sonally loving  and  personally  saving  God  and 
Father  we  seek  must  be  found  in  something 
more  personal  than  the  phenomena  of  nature. 
For  the  relation  of  the  Creator  to  us  in  nature 
is  all  on  impersonal  lines.  There  are  in  nature 
laws,  processes,  order  and  evolution;  and  it  is 
true  that  these  suggest  an  Author  and  Director. 
Yet  they  do  not  lead  us  to  know  Him  as  in 
any  individual  way  caring  for  us.     They  may 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      123 

lead  us  to  acknowledge  the  idea  of  a  Power 
or  Principle  we  call  God;  they  cannot  teach  us 
to  say  'Our  Father.'  This,  surely,  requires  no 
argument. 

Moreover,  this  is  not  because  our  knowledge 
of  nature  is  as  yet  incomplete.  It  is  equally 
true  even  were  our  scientific  knowledge  perfect. 
Let  us  imagine  science  to  have  done  its  perfect 
work.  Let  us  imagine  the  dream  of  Laplace 
realised  and  all  the  processes  of  the  natural 
world — physical,  vital,  mental — reduced  to  a 
single  common  denominator.  In  short,  let  the 
molecule  be  found  which  is  the  egg  from  which 
the  whole  cosmos  has  come.  This  would  be 
to  know  the  world.  But  would  it  be,  in  any 
religious  sense,  to  know  God?  Would  it  bring 
man,  who  is  spirit  and  capable  of  intercourse 
with  the  Father  of  his  spirit,  and  who  seeks 
a  divine  love  and  a  divine  salvation,  any 
further  in  the  insatiable  quest  of  the  soul:  'O 
that  I  might  find  Him'  ?  Would  it  do  anything 
to  answer  the  apostle's  prayer:  'Show  us  the 
Father  and  it  sufficeth  us'  ?  It  would  not. 
There  is  nothing  more  utterly  futile  than  the 


i24  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

idea — cherished  by  some  schools  of  science  and 
feared  by  some  schools  of  religion — that  the 
advance  of  scientific  knowledge  of  the  world 
means  the  retrocession  and,  in  the  end,  the 
supersession  of  religion.  The  place  for  re- 
ligion remains  untouched  by  scientific  knowl- 
edge. That  place  is  not  a  few  still  outstanding 
phenomenal  problems,  such  as  the  origin  of 
life  or  of  consciousness.  It  may  be  that  such 
phenomenal  problems  will  ever  baffle  the  scien- 
tific synthesis;  on  the  other  hand,  science  is 
thoroughly  entitled  to  say  that  this  result  is  not 
what  is  suggested  either  from  the  past  progress 
of  knowledge  or  from  the  conviction  of  the 
unity  of  the  world.  But  however  this  may  be, 
the  place  and  need  of  religion  remain  exactly 
what  they  were.  For  science  never  finds  more 
than  impersonal  law,  and  religion  never  seeks 
less  than  personal  love.  We  must  not  assume 
the  latter  search  is  satisfied;  but  we  certainly 
can  say  it  is  not  and  it  never  can  be  satisfied 
by  even  a  complete  knowledge  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  nature.  Felix  qui  potuit  rerum 
cognoscere  cans  as ;  yet  this  is  not  even  the  be- 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      125 

ginning  of  his  blessedness  who  knows  the  love 
and  the  salvation  of  His  Father  in  heaven. 

But  it  will  be  said  that  here  I  am  doing  what 
in  a  former  chapter  I  criticised  Huxley  for 
doing — namely,  treating  nature  with  man  left 
out.  Within  the  human  soul  are  more  than 
impersonal  impressions  of  God.  Inward  in- 
tuitions are  there, 

'which,   be  they  what  they  may, 
Are  yet  the  fountain  light  of  all  our  day, 
Are  yet  a  master  light  of  all  our  seeing.'1 

And  in  these  feelings — which  in  souls  of  higher 
spiritual  capacity  attain  to  be  clear  and  com- 
manding convictions  of  a  faith  in  God's  per- 
sonal character  and  personal  love,  and  in  His 
speaking  individually  to  His  children  and  hear- 
ing and  answering  their  prayers — must  we  not 
recognise  a  revelation  of  God  intimate  and 
personal,  and  such  as  our  souls  seek?  On  this 
many  things  may  be  said,  but  I  shall  here  touch 
on  only  two  points. 

One  is  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact  and  experi- 

1  Wordsworth's  Ode  on  the  Intimations  of  Immortality,  ix. 


126  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

ence,  inward  intuitions  and  emotions  of  this 
kind  do  not  and  cannot  generally  maintain 
themselves  as  assured  knowledge  against  the 
contradiction  of  outward  facts  in  nature  and 
life.  There  are,  no  doubt,  minds  of  which  this 
cannot  be  said — minds  which,  happily  or  other- 
wise, are  so  uncritically  constituted  that  they  can 
persuade  themselves  that  what  they  find  within 
is  also  fact  without,  and  that  their  ideals  are 
a  valid  standard  of  reality.  But  not  many  of 
us  are  so  easily  satisfied.  And  surely  to  take 
such  great  and  definite  propositions  of  faith  as 
that  God  shares  our  sufferings  and  sacrifices 
Himself  for  our  sins  as  securely  guaranteed 
by  any  merely  inward  sentiments  is  to  build  on 
foundations  palpably  unable  to  support  such  a 
superstructure.  The  truth  is  that  all  inward 
feelings  on  such  topics,  even  though  we  may 
feel  them  strongly  and  call  them  convictions, 
are  so  mixed  up  with  our  personal  predilections 
and  desires  and  imaginings  that  it  is  simply 
impossible  to  surmount  the  sceptical  suspicions 
that  they  are,  or  at  least  may  be,  but  a  sub- 
jective   conceiving    of    our    own    generalising 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      127 

minds.  There  is  no  guarantee  other  than  our- 
selves that  they  represent  more  than  what  is 
in  and  of  ourselves.  A  faith  of  this  kind  is 
(if  I  may  here  repeat  a  phrase  I  have  written 
.elsewhere)  'a  mere  edifice  of  conceptions  in- 
securely founded  on  the  bed-rock  of  fact.'1  At 
best,  it  will  be  a  wistful  rather  than  a  stablished 
faith.  Moreover,  it  is  not  a  faith  which  can 
be  presented  by  one  to  another  from  any 
ground  common  to  both;  if  a  man  tells  me  he 
is  sure  in  his  experience  of  God's  love,  that 
does  not  help  me  to  be  sure,  for  he  is  built 
that  way  and  I  am  not.  A  faith  with  this 
merely  experimental  basis  may  exist  in  its  own 
retreat  in  souls  of  a  certain  type.  It  cannot 
face  encounter  with  the  facts  of  life,  nor  can 
it  take  possession,  in  the  name  of  the  gospel, 
of  the  public  territory  of  truth. 

But  a  second  thing  is  to  be  said  about  this 
appeal  within  to  find  the  assurance  about  God 
which  faith  seeks.  When  we  thus  turn  inward 
we  discover  a  new  need  for  more  than  nature 
without   and  even  human  nature   in   our  own 

1  The  Fact  of  Christ,  p.  105. 


128  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

hearts  can  supply.  We  find  the  need  of  some- 
thing in  addition  to  knowledge.  We  find  not 
only  an  intellectual  darkness  or  dimness  but 
also  a  moral  defilement.  We  find  that  anti- 
natural  of  which  so  much — by  which  is  meant 
so  little — was  said  in  the  previous  chapter.  To 
this  new  element  and  its  need,  nature  and  even 
human  nature  have  nothing,  or  nothing  ade- 
quate, to  say.  That  outward  nature  has  noth- 
ing to  offer  as  a  salving  and  saving  message  for 
a  bad  conscience  is  plain.  But  has  even  human 
nature  within  what  really  and  sufficiently  will 
meet  this?  Within  the  soul  are,  indeed,  high 
moral  ideas  and  ideals.  But  the  crux  of  the 
whole  matter  is  that  we  have  these  high  moral 
ideas  and  ideals  but  do  not  obey  them.  The 
word  is  so  trite  that  we  forget  it  is  also  true : — 

' Video  meliora  proboque; 
Deteriora  sequor/1 

There  is  here — indisputably  so — no  strong  sal- 
vation any  more  than  any  sure  revelation. 
Much  more  might  easily  be  said  on  these 

1  Ovid's  Metam.,  vii.  20. 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST 


129 


points  and  on  others  touching  on  this  aspect 
of  our  subject,  but  perhaps  enough  has  been 
said  for  our  present  purpose.  That  purpose 
is  certainly  not  to  deny  God  in  nature  and 
human  nature.  But  it  is  to  show — what  in- 
deed is  indisputable  fact — that  in  the  general 
phenomena  of  nature  there  is  not  manifested 
the  personal  love  of  God,  and  in  the  ideals  of 
human  nature  there  is  not  salvation.  It  is, 
therefore,  in  something  more  than  nature  and 
human  nature  that  we  must  look  for  a  basis 
for  a  faith  in  God  personally  loving  and  sav- 
ing suffering  and  sinful  men.  It  is  in  what  is 
commonly  called  the  'supernatural.'  One  has 
scruples  in  using  the  word,  not  in  the  least 
because  of  any  desire  to  evade  or  minimise  the 
truth  it  is  meant  to  represent,  but  simply  be- 
cause it  is  so  misused  and  misunderstood.  If 
we  use  it,  let  us  be  clear  as  to  what  it  means. 
It  does  not  mean  the  splitting  of  the  universe 
as  with  a  hatchet  into  two  sections,  in  one  of 
which  is  natural  law  and  in  the  other  a  God 
who  is  exlex.  There  is  but  one  universe,  and 
God  who  is  in  it  all  is  ever  reason  and  cannot 


1 3o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

deny  Himself.  What  it  means  may  be  most 
simply  stated  by  saying  that  the  antithesis  is 
not  between  nature  and  miracle,  or  between 
law  and  non-law,  but  between  the  impersonal 
and  the  personal  action  of  God.  In  the  gen- 
eral processes  of  nature  God  expresses  Himself 
impersonally,  just  as  a  king  does  in  the  laws 
of  his  realm.  But  it  need  be  no  irrational 
contradiction  of  this  that  God,  for  adequate 
reason,  should  express  Himself  further  on 
personal  lines,  manifesting  His  love  to  indi- 
vidual souls  and  saving  individual  lives.  This 
is  the  only  supernatural  in  which  religion  has 
interest.  A  mere  thaumaturgical  display  or  a 
mere  unexplained  wonder  is  of  no  value  for 
religion;  it  is  the  personally  living  and  saving 
God  which  is  the  one  thing  of  value  in  the 
supernatural.  It  is  astonishing  how  little  this 
is  perceived  by  even  the  most  eminent  oppo- 
nents of  Christian  faith  on  this  subject.  If 
ever  there  was  an  intelligent  man  it  was  Hux- 
ley; if  ever  there  was  a  cultured  man  it  was 
Matthew  Arnold.  Yet  the  test  case  of  the 
supernatural  which  the  former  desiderated  was 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      131 

a  centaur  trotting  about,  while  the  latter's 
example  would  be  his  pen  turned  into  a  pen- 
wiper. It  is  a  cheap  thing  to  speak  disrespect- 
fully of  distinguished  men,  and  I  hope  not  to 
fall  into  the  way  of  doing  it;  but  I  shall  take 
leave  to  say  of  these  suggestions  that  they 
stand  as  a  signal  illustration  of  how  even  the 
most  intelligent  men  are  capable  of  lapsing  at 
times  into  unintelligence.  The  Christian  super- 
natural has  nothing  to  do  with  silliness  of  this 
kind.  It  is  God  Himself  showing — as  is  not 
shown  on  the  plane  of  nature — that  He  per- 
sonally shares  my  life  and  saves  me  from  my 
sin.  The  thought  may  be  unestablished  or 
untrue;  but  it  is  at  least  great  enough  not  to 
be  classed  with  the  performances  of  a  glorified 
circus  or  with  conjuring  tricks  with  pens. 

The  question  before  us  is  now  sufficiently 
clear.  It  is  this,  whether  there  is  ground  for 
the  faith  that  God,  who  is  the  Author  of  all 
nature  but  who  there  manifests  Himself  only 
on  impersonal  lines,  has,  in  a  way  consistent 
with  His  reason  and  worthy  of  Himself,  also 
and  further  manifested  Himself  as  the  Father 


1 32  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

of  souls  which  seek  to  know  Him  and  the 
Saviour  of  lives  which  are  enslaved  in  sin.  If 
we  do  not  find  an  adequate  and  assured  answer 
to  this  question  in  the  facts  of  nature  and 
human  nature,  we  may  now  turn  to  test  the 
reality  of  that  answer  to  it  which  is  proposed 
to  us  in  the  fact  of  Jesus  Christ. 

In  the  first  place,  it  will  be  well  to  make 
clear  to  our  minds  what  kind  of  test  of  reality 
we  desiderate  and  should  find  sufficient.  Well, 
real  facts  are  of  two  kinds.  There  is  such  a 
thing  as  objective  reality.  The  subtleties  of 
philosophy  can,  of  course,  refine  it  away  and 
show  us  that  everything  objective  may  be  a 
deception;  but,  speaking  practically,  we  all 
recognise  such  a  thing  as  the  reality  of,  say,  a 
historical  event.  The  battle  of  Waterloo,  for 
example,  really  happened,  and  nothing  can 
alter  its  reality  as  a  fact.  But  there  is  another 
kind  of  reality,  very  different  from  the  other, 
yet  most  essential  and  conclusive.  This  is  the 
reality  of  experience.  We  do  not  say  of  love 
or  happiness  or  hope  or  fear  within  us  that 
it  happens  as  the  battle  of  Waterloo  happened, 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      133 

and  yet  these  are  real  facts  which  we  know 
and  of  which  we  are  sure.  These  then  are  the 
two  kinds  of  reality  within  our  cognisance. 
Now  neither  alone  is  quite  perfect  as  knowl- 
edge of  reality;  for  objective  history  may  be 
inaccurately  recorded  for  us,  and  subjective 
experience  may  be  merely  temperamental.  But 
an  exceptional  degree  of  certainty  in  the  test 
of  reality  is  reached  when  these  two — the  his- 
torical or  objective  and  the  experimental  or 
subjective — corroborate  each  other  and  inter- 
lock. A  man  who  not  only  reads  of  a  battle 
but  has  been  through  it,  a  woman  who  not  only 
'feels  happy'  in  her  husband's  love  but  has  the 
tangible  tokens  of  it  every  day  in  her  life — 
these  persons  have  the  fullest  possible  cer- 
tainty of  the  reality  of  these  things.  Now  it 
is  exactly  this  kind  of  certainty  which  I  wish 
to  apply  as  the  test  of  the  reality  of  the  fact 
of  Jesus  Christ.  No  less  security  is  sufficient 
for  an  issue  so  great  as  the  truth  of  the  gospel. 

First,  then,  let  us  take  what  I  shall  call  the 
plain  print  of  history. 

To  many  the  page  of  history  on  which  the 


i34  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

name  of  Jesus  Christ  is  written  may  seem  to 
be  anything  but  plain  print.  Indeed,  in  our 
day,  there  are  those — such  as  Professor  Drews 
in  his  Die  Christusmythe  and  Mr.  J.  M. 
Robertson  in  his  Christianity  and  Mythology 
— who  tell  us  it  is  a  blank  page,  for  Jesus  never 
existed  at  all.  I  really  cannot  here  turn  aside 
to  discuss  this  perverse  and  incoherent  reductio 
ad  absurdum  of  criticism.  It  must  suffice  to 
say,  in  a  word,  that  it  is  more  than  nineteen 
centuries  too  late  to  be  true.  If  it  were  true, 
the  opponents  of  Christian  faith  in  the  first 
century,  who  must  have  known  that  Jesus  was 
but  the  name  of  a  myth,  would  have  met  the 
new  religion  with  something  far  more  con- 
clusive than  disputing  whether  it  was  true  that 
He  rose  or  arguing  that  it  is  inconceivable  to 
think  of  a  divine  being  suffering.  They  could 
have  exploded  the  whole  thing  if  Jesus  never 
rose  because  He  never  died,  and  never  died 
because  He  never  lived,  and  there  was  no  Jesus 
either  to  die  or  rise.  This  mythical  idea  is 
really  a  fooling  with  history;  and  I  pass  from 
it   by   quoting   the   verdict    of    an   unequalled 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      135 

authority  on  the  subject  of  religious  mythology, 
Dr.  J.  G.  Frazer,  that  it  would  be  just  as 
reasonable  to  question  the  historic  existence  of 
Alexander  the  Great  or  Charlemagne.1  Still, 
this  extravagance  apart,  that  there  is  to-day  a 
real  and  pressing  problem  with  regard  to  the 
page  of  print  with  which  we  are  dealing  is  in- 
disputable. Criticism  is  continually  deciphering 
it,  and  seems  to  find  the  text  often  corrupt  and 
almost  illegible.  A  celebrated  scholar — Dr. 
Schmiedel — leaves  us  with  some  ten  lines2  upon 
which  to  build  a  life  of  Jesus.  It  is  this  critical 
uncertainty  which  invites  so  many  persons  to- 
day to  find  a  Christianity  independent  of  the 
historical  Jesus.  It  befogs  and  bewilders  many 
a  mind  to-day  that  used  to  read  securely  about 
Christ  in  the  gospels,  and  causes  it  to  say: 
'They  have  taken  away  my  Lord,  and  I  know 
not  where  they  have  laid  Him.'  I  have  known 
persons  who  read  the  gospels  through,  as  it 
were  for  the  last  time,  feeling  that  henceforth 
they  could  never  be  sure  that  the  Jesus  therein 

1  Attis,  Adonis,  Osiris  {The  Golden  Bough,  pt.  iv.),  P-  202,  n. 

2  Encyclopedia  Biblica,  art.  'Gospels,'  §  139. 


1 36  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

described  is  really  true.  This  difficulty  and 
danger  are  far  too  real  to  be  evaded,  in  the 
pulpit  or  anywhere  else.  There  is  no  use  pre- 
tending that  criticism  has  not  profoundly  al- 
tered our  attitude  to  the  evangelical  narrative 
(as  to  the  Bible  generally),  and  it  is  not  pos- 
sible for  the  educated  modern  reader,  at  all 
conversant  with  critical  methods  and  results, 
to  take  it  as  the  uncritical  believing  mind  used 
to  do.  And  it  is  affectation  and  worse  to  deny 
that  many  perturbing  questions  thus  are  forced 
upon  the  honest  mind.  But  it  is  an  entire  mis- 
take to  conclude  that,  because  of  all  this,  what 
it  is  essential  for  us  to  know  about  the  Jesus 
of  history  in  order  to  read  the  gospel  in  Him 
is  therefore  lost  in  haze.  Jesus  Himself  is 
that  gospel.  The  essential  thing  is  that  we 
have  sure  knowledge  of  Him.  It  is  not  essen- 
tial— essential,  I  mean,  for  the  assurance  that 
here  is  God's  word  of  personal  love  and  sal- 
vation for  men — that  we  must  have  sure  and 
indisputable  knowledge  of  everything  about 
Him.  I  repeat  it:  Jesus  Himself  as  reality  is 
what  we  need  to  know.     And  it  is  this  which 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      137 

in  the  gospels  has  an  even  historical  reality 
which  is  indisputable  and  indestructible.  But 
this  must  be  said  more  distinctly  and  justified. 
What,  then,  more  distinctly  is  meant  by 
speaking  of  Jesus  'Himself  as  essential,  and 
distinguishing  from  this  'everything  about 
Him'?  I  think  we  can  answer  if  we  look  at 
our  own  selves.  What  is  my  self,  as  distin- 
quishable  from  the  special  incidents  of  my  life? 
We  do  not  seek  here,  in  reply  to  this  question, 
any  philosophical  definition;  we  wish  to  know 
where  this  self  is  to  be  found.  Well,  a  man's 
self  is  found  in  his  relations  to  things,  and 
more  specifically  in  these  three  vital  relation- 
ships :  to  God,  to  his  own  consciousness,  and 
to  others  and  the  world.  The  incidents  of  his 
life  express  the  man's  self  in  these  three  rela- 
tions, which  are  the  lines  along  which  his  self 
comes  into  actual  being.  To  know  Jesus 
'Himself,'  therefore,  is  not  to  construct  Christo- 
logical  formulas  about  His  Person;  it  is  to  in- 
quire what,  as  a  matter  of  historical  fact,  was 
His  relation  to  God,  what  His  self-conscious- 
ness,   and   what   His    attitude    towards    man. 


i38  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

Now  it  is  Jesus  in  these  vital  relations  of  life 
who  is  indisputable  and  indestructible. 

I  surely  do  not  need  to  attempt  once  more 
to  do  what  has  been  done  in  innumerable  ways 
by  students  of  the  Person  of  Jesus  Christ — 
namely,  set  forth  what  the  Figure  in  the  gospels 
is  in  these  respects.  The  fewest  possible  words 
must  suffice  here.  First,  then,  as  regards  His 
relation  to  God,  we  find  one  whose  filial  con- 
sciousness towards  Him  was  absolutely  un- 
broken and  perfect,  who  never  needed  even 
once,  as  the  saintliest  among  us  need  continu- 
ally, to  return  to  the  Father  by  the  road  of 
repentance  and  reformation,  and  who,  further, 
knew  the  things  of  God,  not  spelling  them  out 
from  below  in  much  dimness  and  doubt,  and 
making  many  mistakes,  as  the  wisest  of  us  do, 
but  as  one  speaking  from  the  region  where 
these  are  seen  and  sure,  and  announcing  them 
with  an  authority  which  is  final  as  the  law  of 
God  itself.  Then,  as  regards  what  we  call  the 
self-consciousness  of  Jesus,  we  find  one  who 
had  nothing  of  that  dualism  between  the  ideal 
and  the  actual — 'les  deux  homines  en  moi' — 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      139 

which  is  the  very  first  datum  within  our  moral 
consciousness  (and,  according  to  the  experience 
of  all  the  saints,  it  is  those  who  live  nearest 
God  who  feel  this  dualism  most  and  confess 
their  failure  and  sin  because  of  it)  ;  and  one, 
moreover,  who,  without  any  sense  either  of 
presumption  or  incongruity,  regarded  Himself 
and  offered  Himself  as  one  in  whom  all  hu- 
manity's spiritual  needs  could  be  met.  Lastly, 
as  regards  Jesus'  relation  to  others,  we  find 
one  who  took  up  an  attitude  which  no  one  of 
us  has  the  right  to  take  up  towards  any  fellow- 
man — calling  for  a  surrender  of  the  very  self 
to  Him,  claiming  to  be  the  final  judge  of  their 
lives  as  of  their  destinies,  and,  above  all,  not 
merely  preaching  to  them  about  the  forgive- 
ness of  God,  but  Himself,  most  personally, 
forgiving  their  sins,  so  that,  most  naturally, 
the  onlookers  called  it  blasphemy.  This — 
stated  in  the  baldest  possible  terms — is  what 
the  Jesus  of  the  gospels  was  in  His  relation 
to  God,  in  His  own  self-consciousness,  in  His 
attitude  to  men.  It  is  not  single  incidents  or 
sayings  which  exhibit  this;  it  is  the  whole 
picture. 


i4o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

But,  it  is  asked,  is  the  picture  authentic? 
I  desire  to  answer  this  question  distinctly  and 
unevasively.  Upon  the  mare  magnum  of  the 
purely  critical  discussion  of  the  New  Testament 
documents  I  cannot  be  expected  here  to  em- 
bark; but  the  general  argument  I  shall  adduce 
is  sufficient,  if  it  be  valid,  to  meet  the  crux  of 
the  question. 

The  answer  of  negative  criticism  to  what 
has  just  been  said  about  Jesus  is  that  all  this 
is  to  be  accounted  for  as  a  later  development 
of  the  thought  of  the  Christian  community, 
which,  persuaded  that  Jesus  was  the  Messiah 
and  anxious  to  promote  that  conviction,  more 
and  more  exaggerated  the  accounts  of  His  life 
and  personality  to  suit  the  case,  and  so,  as  a 
noteworthy  English  writer  puts  it,  'the  testi- 
mony even  of  eye-witnesses  rose  unconsciously 
to  meet  the  high  demand  for  a  fit  account  of 
the  Messiah's  work.'1  Now  a  good  deal  might 
be  fairly  said  upon  this  on  strictly  critical 
grounds — that,  for  example,  it  takes  time  and 
could  hardly  be  done  with  success  immediately 

1  J.  Estlin  Carpenter's  First  Three  Gospels,  p.  83. 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      141 

upon  Christ's  death  and  in  face  of  those  who 
knew  Him  in  life,  and  yet  that  this  picture  is 
not  a  portrait  of  later  as  distinguished  from 
the  earlier  and  primitive  tradition.1  But,  not 
to  enter  upon  any  discussion  as  to  this  (which 
would  necessarily  be  a  detailed  discussion), 
I  shall  rather  submit  the  impossibility  involved 
in  such  a  theory  as  that  just  indicated — an  im- 
possibility which  is  at  once  more  intelligible 
and  more  final  than  any  merely  critical  ob- 
jection. 

In  the  first  place,  let  it  be  admitted  that  this 
kind  of  thing — this  exaggeration  of  the  por- 
trait under  the  stimulus  of  a  desire  to  prove 
Jesus  to  have  been  the  Messiah — could  be  done 
in  the  reporting  of  various  details  of  His  life. 
It  is  clearly  possible,  in  some  such  personal  or 
doctrinal  party-interest,  to  work  up  an  incident 
into  a  miracle  and  to  make  a  story  fit  nicely 

1  Dr.  Denney's  Jesus  and  the  Gospel  is  an  exhaustive  and 
really  conclusive  argument  for  the  last  statement.  What  is 
said  of  Jesus  in  the  text  above  is  practically  all  contained 
"within  Professor  Flinders  Petrie's  'Nucleus'  of  the  primitive 
record,  and  the  essentials  of  it  are  in  the  early  speeches  in 
the  Book  of  Acts,  which  even  Dr.  Schmiedel  says  give  a  pic- 
ture that  'must  have  come  from  a  primitive  source.' 


1 42  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

into  a  prophecy.  But,  as  has  already  been 
indicated,  the  challenging  thing  about  Jesus 
Christ  is  not  this  or  that  detail  in  the  gospels, 
but  is  the  whole  personality  in  and  behind  all 
incidents  aand  stories.  It  is  a  personality — a 
character,  a  consciousness — than  which  I  ven- 
ture to  say  there  is  nothing  in  the  whole  range 
of  literature  less  like  the  invention  of  men. 
After  all,  we  know  pretty  well  by  this  time 
what  the  human  mind,  even  in  men  of  great 
genius,  can  create  in  literature;  and  when  we 
compare  these  figures  with  the  Figure  in  the 
gospel,  the  mot  juste  is  Rousseau's — Ce  n'est 
pas  ainsi  qu'on  invente.  When  critics  in  this 
enlightened  and  educated  and  cultured  twen- 
tieth-century England  tell  us  this  incomparable 
character  and  consciousness — the  'divinity'  of 
which,  not  in  the  dogmatic  or  ecclesiastical 
sense  but  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  sense,  has 
impressed  itself  on  the  noblest  thought  of  the 
world  for  two  thousand  years  and  is  undimmed 
to-day — were  originally  created  and  then  con- 
sistently carried  through  by  some  obscure 
Jewish  pamphleteers  of  the  second  century  in 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      143 

the  party-interest  of  an  ecclesiastical  propa- 
ganda, I  am  inclined  to  make  reply  thus :  'And 
shall  we — we  "who  speak  the  tongue  that 
Shakespere  spoke"  [here  I  should  certainly 
work  in  Shakespere  for  all  he  is  worth] — shall 
we  be  put  to  shame  by  Jewish  second-century 
pamphleteers?  Let  us  do  it.  You,  then,  do 
it,  or  something  like  it.  Create — and,  at  some 
length,  fill  in — the  portrait  of  a  man  who  lives 
in  perfect  unison  with  God,  who  often  talks 
to  others  about  their  bad  self  but  is  never 
conscious  of  his  own,  and  who,  with  no  sense 
of  impropriety,  claims  absolute  dominion  over 
men's  life,  judges  their  souls,  and  takes  it  on 
Him  to  forgive  their  sins.  You  do  it,  I  say — 
as  these  second-century  Jewish  fellows  did — 
and  get  the  world  to  call  it  divine;  thus  will 
you  at  once  glorify  our  literature,  immortalise 
your  names,  and  prove  the  case.'  This  is  said 
in  the  form  of  a  jest,  and  perhaps  one  should 
apologise  for  assuming,  even  momentarily,  a 
jesting  tone  on  such  a  question.  But  it  is  said 
seriously  too.  The  truth  is  that,  far  from  being 
able  to   produce   such   a  personality  as  Jesus 


i44  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

Christ  in  the  original,  the  finest  minds  feel  how 
unable  they  are  ever  to  reproduce  Him.  Why 
will  an  adequate  life  of  Jesus  never  be  written? 
Why,  if  not  because,  as  Matthew  Arnold  said, 
'we  cannot  explain  Him,  cannot  get  behind 
Him  and  above  Him,  cannot  command  Him'?1 
We  do  not  speak  thus  even  of  Shakespere's 
characters;  and  assuredly  the  last  man  to  speak 
thus  of  the  literary  creation  of  second-century 
Jews  was  Matthew  Arnold.  No,  verily — and 
to  sum  it  all  up — various  are  the  relationships 
men  may  hold  towards  Jesus  Christ,  but  one 
they  cannot  hold.  They  may  be  His  oppo- 
nents or  His  disciples;  they  may  be  critics  or 
worshippers ;  they  may  be  doubters  or  believers. 
But  they  cannot — never  could  and  never  can — 
be  His  creators. 

It  is  impossible,  without  unduly  extending 
this  chapter,  to  develop  this  argument  further, 
here.  It  is  not,  let  me  say,  the  argument  of 
orthodoxy;  no  one  has  stated  it  more  explicitly 
than  John  Stuart  Mill,  who  declares  'it  is  no 
use  to  say  that  Christ  as  exhibited  in  the  gospels 

1  Literature  and  Dogma  (Preface  to  Popular  Edition). 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      145 

is  not  historical,'  for,  while  'the  tradition  of 
His  followers  suffices  to  insert  any  number  of 
marvels'  and  suchlike,  who,  either  of  His  dis- 
ciples or  of  the  early  Christian  writers,  'was 
capable  of  inventing  the  sayings  ascribed  to 
Jesus  or  of  imagining  the  life  and  character 
revealed  in  the  gospels'?1  It  is  the  argument 
neither  of  orthodoxy  nor  of  heterodoxy;  it  is 
the  argument  of  plain  critical  reason.  Let  the 
reader,  who  would  pursue  and  test  it  further, 
take  the  gospels  in  his  hand  and  read  them 
with  the  mind  and  conscience  which  are  ready 
to  recognise  and  receive  spiritual  life  and  truth. 
He  will  find  many  incidents  which,  frankly,  he 
hardly  knows  what  to  do  with.  But  he  will 
find  also,  as  Dr.  Denney  has  put  it,  'there  is 
a  person  before  his  eyes  in  the  gospels  whose 
spiritual  reality  (to  express  it  thus)  is  so  in- 
disputable that  it  carries  his  historical  reality 
along  with  it.'2  He  may  say  that  the  evangel- 
ists may  have  made  this  or  that  story  about 

1  Three  Essays  on  Religion:  Theism,  v.    The  whole  passage 
should  be  read. 

2  Jesus  and  *u"  Gospel,  p.  167. 


146  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

Jesus;  he  will  not  say  they  made  Jesus  Himself, 
whom  it  is  as  far  beyond  the  most  enthusiastic 
belief  to  have  created  as  it  is  beyond  the  most 
critical  unbelief  to  destroy. 

Here  we  have  already  touched  our  second 
line  of  witness  to  the  reality  of  Christ — that 
of  experience — and  to  this  I  now  pass. 

There  is  more  need  to  be  critical  about  the 
script  of  experience  than  even  the  print  of 
history.  It  is  so  easy  here  to  talk  largely  and 
loosely,  to  be  unscientific  and  inaccurate,  to 
make  experience  say  more  than,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  it  can  say.  We  must  criticise  our  experi- 
ence if  it  is  to  teach  us  safely.  This  is  the 
case  with  even  human  emotions;  the  best  and 
most  interpretative  love-poetry,  for  example, 
is  not  that  of  mere  youthful  sentimentalists, 
but  is  given  us  by  those  who — not  coldly,  in- 
deed, but  truly — read  what  their  passion  means. 
And  certainly  it  is  the  case  with  religious  ex- 
perience. If  then  we  are  going  to  call  in  this 
witness  to  corroborate  the  testimony  to  the 
reality  of  Christ,  let  us  not  give  the  rein  to 
vague    emotions    and    impressions,    but    keep 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      147 

strictly  to  what,  in  a  real  and  sure  sense,  are 
facts  of  moral  and  spiritual  experience. 

It  is  obvious,  to  begin  with,  that  experience 
cannot  be  asked  to  corroborate  the  mere  ex- 
ternal incidents  of  the  life  of  Christ;  but  we 
have  seen  that  the  essential  thing  for  us  is 
not  this  or  that  incident  but  is  Jesus  Himself. 
Even  as  regards  Jesus  Himself,  however,  it  is 
obvious  that  our  experience  cannot  witness  to 
everything;  we  cannot,  for  example,  reproduce 
within  our  consciousness  that  unique  self-con- 
sciousness which  is  depicted,  with  such  con- 
vincing historic  reality,  in  the  gospels.  The 
crucial  aspect  of  the  personality  of  Jesus  which 
may  be  tested  in  our  experience  is  His  relation 
to  man.  What,  then,  we  must  ask,  is  Jesus — 
this  historical  Jesus  of  the  gospels — to  us  in 
the  experience  of  mind  and  heart  and  con- 
science and  life?  To  this  question  I  believe 
and  submit  that  experience  gives  an  answer 
which  is  clear  and  indisputable. 

When  our  minds  and  hearts  and  consciences 
and  lives  directly  and  honestly  face  Jesus  Christ 
— the  historical  Jesus  Christ,  I  say  again,  of 


148  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

the  gospels — what  we  are  met  with  may,  I 
think,  be  characterised  thus:  it  is  a  call,  leading 
when  obeyed  into  a  companionship,  and  this, 
in  turn,  the  source  of  a  new  life.  Other  words 
may,  of  course,  be  used  to  describe  this,  but 
that  these  are  real  elements  in  the  experience 
of  a  man  really  turned  towards  Christ  and 
faithfully  trying  to  be  true  to  Him  can  hardly, 
I  think,  be  questioned.  Now,  what  is  it  which 
is  the  crucial  characteristic  of  the  experience 
of  this  call,  companionship,  and  life?  In  order 
to  answer  this  we  need  not  make  claim  to  be 
profoundly  experienced  Christians.  The  thing 
I  am  going  to  name  will  be  recognised  as  true 
even  by  those  of  us  whose  obedience  to  the 
call,  faithfulness  to  the  fellowship,  and  realisa- 
tion of  the  life  lived  with  Christ  are  of  the 
poorest.  But  the  one  thing  we  do  know  about 
this  relationship  to  Him,  if  we  know  anything 
about  it  at  all,  is  this,  that  this  call  of,  com- 
panionship with,  and  power  from  Christ  are 
simply  identical  with  the  call,  companionship, 
and  power  of  God  Himself.  This  is  really  the 
most  clear  and  indisputable  thing  in  any  Chris- 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      149 

tian  man's  relationship  with  Christ.  He  makes 
and  can  make  no  kind  of  distinction  within  his 
experience  between  'knowing  God'  and  'know- 
ing Him  whom  He  hath  sent' — that  is,  Jesus 
Christ.  Indeed,  as  Dr.  Harnack  puts  it,  'every 
relationship  to  God' — that  is,  of  course,  in  the 
things  of  the  gospel — 'is  at  the  same  time  a 
relationship  to  Jesus  Christ.'1  In  all  this  I 
do  not  mean  anything  dogmatic — any  doctrine 
of  God  and  Christ.  I  am  speaking  solely  of 
what  is  found  fact  in  experience;  and  nothing 
in  Christian  experience  is  so  clearly  or  really 
fact  as  this,  that  to  hear  Christ's  call  is  to 
hear  God,  to  know  Christ's  companionship  is 
to  have  fellowship  with  God,  to  live  life  under 
the  influence  of  Christ  is  to  live  it  with  God. 
If  Christianity  means  anything  at  all  in  the 
soul,  it  means  this.  As  this  is  the  most  surely 
attested,  so  is  it  also  the  most  widely  attested 
fact  in  what  we  call  Christian  experience.  The 
Christian  beginner  at  least  recognises  that  his 
response  to  Christ  has  been  just  his  response 
to  God;  while  the  most  experienced  saint  never 

3  Dogmengcschlchte,  iii.  69. 


i5o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

finds  that  he  gets  past  this  relationship  to 
Christ  to  another  and  deeper  relationship  with 
God  beyond.  Here,  then,  is  a  fact  of  life  about 
Jesus  Christ  which  we  can  take  as  solid  and 
can  verify  as  sure. 

Let  us  now  place  together  the  central  and 
indestructible  thing  in  the  history  and  this 
crucial  and  indisputable  thing  in  our  experience. 

Do  they  not  indeed  interlock?  There,  in 
history,  is  One  whose  personality  is  assuredly 
not  that  merely  of  one  man  of  the  world's 
population — One,  in  particular,  whose  relation- 
ship to  man  was  that  which  no  man  can  take  to 
another,  but  is  indeed  the  relationship  which 
only  God  can  assume  to  any  of  us.  And  here, 
in  our  moral  and  spiritual  experience — no 
vague  emotion  in  it  but  its  surest  fact — is  the 
same  person  meaning  for  us  not  simply  one 
more  of  the  world's  population  or  even  a  great 
teacher  of  long  ago,  but  what  only  God  Him- 
self can  mean  and  be.  Let  us,  for  the  present, 
disregard  any  kind  of  theological  synthesis  of 
all  this.  Let  us  look  solely  and  simply  at  the 
facts — the  two  facts  which  come  to  be  one  fact, 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      151 

for  each  is  the  complement  and  corroboration 
of  the  other.  Do  they  not,  I  ask  again,  inter- 
lock? If  so,  the  fact  of  Christ  has  surely  the 
highest  possible  kind  of  reality,  and  the  search 
of  our  faith  for  a  sure  word  which  should  mean 
God  personally  speaking  to  us,  caring  for  us, 
saving  us  has  been  not  in  vain. 

At  the  risk  of  reiteration,  let  me  still  further 
emphasise  this  combination  of  both  these  ele- 
ments as  that  which  makes  faith  fast.  We  are 
constantly  being  told  that  history  is  unnecessary 
and  irrelevant  here,  and  also  that  the  two  to- 
gether— the  historical  and  the  experiential — 
are  incongruous  and  incompatible.  I  shall  say 
a  word  on  each  of  these  contentions.  The 
former  takes  high  philosophical  ground.  'Ac- 
cidental truths  of  history,'  it  declares  in  oft- 
quoted  words  of  Lessing,  'can  never  be  proof 
of  necessary  truths  of  reason.'  My  answer  is 
very  simple.  I  am  not  seeking  any  necessary 
truth  of  reason.  I  want  to  know  this — whether 
or  not  God  personally  speaks  to  me  lovingly 
and  savingly.  It  is  quite  consistent  with  eternal 
reason  that  He  does  not.  But  if  He  does — 
u 


1 52  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

let  this  be  clear — it  will  be  shown,  not  in  some 
category  of  Divine  Immanence,  for  immanence 
conceals  rather  than  reveals  character,  but  by 
individual  deeds  done  in  life  even  as  a  man's 
character  is  thus  revealed.  It  is  not  in  a  phi- 
losophy of  ideas  necessarily  true  in  reason,  but 
by  seeing  what  God  has  done  for  us  in  Jesus 
Christ,  who  lived  in  the  theatre  of  this  world, 
that  we  shall  ever  find  the  data  for  the  gospel 
of  God's  personal  love  which  we  seek.  The 
other  contention — that  the  historical  and  the 
experiential  in  faith  are  incongruous  and  in- 
compatible— raises  a  question  of  simple  fact. 
The  antithesis  between  these  is  statable  on 
paper;  but  it  simply  is  not  a  fact  in  the  Chris- 
tian life.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  just  as  we  deal 
in  mind  and  conscience  with  the  historic  person 
of  the  evangelical  records  that  our  religious 
experience  of  the  knowledge  of  God  and  com- 
munion with  Him  grows  rich  and  strong  and 
meaningful  and  sure;  and,  correspondingly, 
these  experiences  are  delivered  from  that  fatal 
subjectivity  of  which  I  have  already  spoken  in 
an  earlier  page   of  this  chapter,   only  when 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      153 

they  are  experiences  which  Christ  creates  and 
countenances.  To  put  this  in  theological  ter- 
minology, Jesus  Christ  (the  historical)  gives 
to  us  His  Spirit  (the  experiential)  ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  Spirit  speaks  not  of  Himself, 
but  takes  of  the  things  of  Christ  and  shows 
them  to  us.  The  alleged  incompatibility  is 
simply  not  a  fact,  and  any  merely  logical  state- 
ment of  it  solvttur  ambulando.  Further,  when 
it  is  maintained  that  these  two  elements — the 
historical  and  the  spiritual — are  of  different 
worlds  and  move  in  different  orbits,  I  reply 
that  Jesus  Christ,  who  is  the  gospel,  is  of  both 
these  worlds  and  in  both  these  orbits.  He  is  a 
fact  of  history  as  fully  as  Julius  Caesar  is.  He 
is  a  spiritual  fact  as  really  as  human  love  is. 
The  Christian  gospel,  then,  is  neither  a  mere 
history,  for  that  would  make  it  a  tradition,  and 
tradition  cannot  save,  nor  a  mere  experience, 
for  that  would  make  it  subjective,  and  what  is 
subjective  is  never  secure;  it  is  both.  The 
two,  I  repeat,  interlock.  They  countersign 
each  other's  witness.  And  this  is  the  unique 
test  of  the  reality  of  the  faith  of  the  gospel. 


i54  THE  FiVCTS  OF  LIFE 

'That  which  God  hath  joined  together,  let  no 
man  put  asunder.'1 

This  chapter  must  not  be  much  longer  ex- 
tended, but,  having  said  so  much  as  has  been 
said  as  to  the  reality  of  this  fact  of  Christ  as 
a  fact  more  than  anything  in  nature  or  human 
nature,  we  must,  at  least  briefly,  recognise  what 
is  involved  in  this  both  intellectually  and  re- 
ligiously. 

That  the  intellectual  consequences  of  such  a 
faith  are  deep  and  far-reaching  is  evident.  A 
Christ  who  thus  transcends  nature  and  human 
nature  means  not  less  than  that  the  boundaries 

1 1  may  add  in  a  note  that  here  is  an  illustration  of  two 
things  which  have  often  struck  my  mind  about  many  ques- 
tions. One  is  the  danger  of  false  antithesis  in  reasoning, 
where  we  are  told  to  accept  one  or  other  of  two  categories 
when  truth  is  found  by  holding  on  to  both.  False  antithesis 
and  loose  terminology  are  the  two  greatest  pitfalls  of  the 
mind.  The  other  thing  rises  out  of  this,  and  is  that  in  a 
number  of  questions  the  truth  lies  in  a  balance  of  apparent 
contraries.  To  use  a  mathematical  figure,  it  is  an  ellipse  with 
two  foci,  rather  than  a  circle  with  one  centre.  In  many  sub- 
jects I  feel  with  Joubert  when  he  said  he  'liked  to  see  two 
truths  at  once.'  This  applies  to  conduct  also,  where  it  is  not 
enough  to  have  a  principle  and  run  amok  with  it,  but  where 
(as  Principal  Rainy  once  phrased  it)  'you  must  let  one  prin- 
ciple play  upon  another.'  A  dissertation  might  be  written  on 
'The  Equipoise  of  Truth,'  but  this  is  not  the  place  to  attempt  it. 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      155 

of  cognisable  reality  in  the  world  and  in  history 
are  enlarged;  and  this  means  a  revised  estimate 
both  of  nature  and  history.  Now  here  I  simply 
decline  to  get  into  a  discussion  of  the  possibility 
of  'miracle.'  Really,  I  do  not  know  exactly 
what  a  miracle  is,  and  have  never  read  a  defi- 
nition which  was  much  better  than  a  begging  of 
the  question  from  one  side  or  the  other.  But 
I  think  I  know  what  a  fact  is.  And  if  anything 
is  a  fact — indelible  in  history  and  indisputable 
in  life — it  is  that  in  Jesus  Christ  is  that  which 
is  not  either  in  nature  or  human  nature.  In- 
stead of  discussing  the  supernatural  a  priori, 
what  we  have  to  do  is  to  make  room  in  our 
mind  for  that  fact.  On  this  I  wish  to  make 
two  remarks.  On  the  one  hand,  it  is  not  to 
be  misstated;  on  the  other,  it  is  not  to  be 
minimised  or  evaded.  It  is  misstated  when  it 
is  represented  as  meaning  the  destruction  of 
the  idea  of  the  unity  of  the  order  of  the  world. 
The  unity  of  the  order  of  the  world  was  a 
Christian  thought  long  before  it  was  articulated 
by  science.  Never  did  it  find  more  explicit 
assertion  than  in  these  words:  'All  things  were 


1 56  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

made  by  Him;  and  apart  from  Him  not  a 
thing  was  made  that  has  been  made.'1  What 
this  fact  of  Christ,  as  more  than  nature,  does 
mean  is  that  the  category  of  unity  is  not  what 
we  call  'natural  law,'  but  is  that  living  and 
loving  God  who  is  in  Him.  But  it  is  even 
more  incumbent  to  say  this  fact  of  Christ  must 
not  be  minimised  or  evaded,  and  on  this  I  wish 
to  speak  more  particularly. 

If  you  say  you  accept  the  reality  of  this 
Christ,  then  you  must  take  the  intellectual 
consequences  of  saying  so  unevasively.  It  is 
neither  fair  nor  frank  to  say  it  in  one  sense 
and  unsay  it  in  another.  Yet  there  is  nothing 
commoner  in  a  great  deal  of  modern  literature 
on  Jesus  Christ  than  this  very  speaking  with 
two  voices.  As  an  example  of  this  I  take  an 
eminent  name,  and  one  of  a  man  we  all  regard 
with  admiration  and  indebtedness.  On  this 
question  Dr.  Harnack  distinguishes  in  a  most 
curious  way  between  what  may  be  accepted  as 
a  fact  in  history  and  what  must  be  received  as 
a  fact  in  religion.  'The  historian,'  he  says, 
1  St.  John  l  6. 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      157 

'cannot  regard  the  supernatural  as  a  sure  his- 
torical event;'  for,  the  writer  continues,  'by 
doing  so  he  is  destroying  the  very  method  of 
interpreting  things  upon  which  all  historical 
investigation  depends.'  This  seems  quite  clear 
and  final;  'but' — and  it  is  a  most  notable  aber — 
Dr.  Harnack  immediately  goes  on,  if  this  same 
historian  be  convinced  that  Jesus  did  what  is 
'in  the  strict  sense  miraculous,'  he  'infers'  from 
this  'a  supernatural  person,'  which  inference, 
however,  'belongs  to  the  province  of  religious 
faith.'1  Now  I  pass  over  comment  on  this 
reference  to  historical  'method'  with  the  single 
observation  that  the  'only  method'  upon  which 
any  historical  investigation  has  any  right  to 
depend  is  to  be  open  to  recognise  whatever  can 
establish  a  case  to  be  recognised  as  a  fact;  and 
surely  I  am  speaking  within  reason  and  with 
studied  moderation  when  I  say  that  Jesus 
Christ  as  a  fact  not  to  be  accounted  for  in 
terms  of  nature  has,  after  twenty  centuries  of 
scrutiny,   a  case  not  to  be  peremptorily  non- 

1  Dogmengescldchte,  ii.  50  n.   (E.  T.,  History  of  Dogma,  i. 
65   n.). 


158  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

suited  at  the  bar  of  history  by  any  'method.' 
But,  passing  from  that,  I  wish  to  ask  if  this 
separation  between  what  a  man  qua  historian 
must  deny  and  qua  believer  may  infer  is  tenable. 
Man  is  not  an  intellectual  amphibian.  He  has 
only  one  mind,  and  he  lives  in  one  world  of 
truth;  it  is  not  possible  to  split  either  the  mind 
or  the  world  into  two  parts,  each  with  its  own 
allegiance.  I  venture  to  put  this,  with  entire 
respect,  more  personally.  Dr.  Harnack,  a 
prominent  and  influential  teacher,  is  asked 
whether  the  supernatural  personality  of  Jesus 
Christ  is  a  credible  fact.  He  answers — I  do 
not  think  this  is  unfair  or  caricature — that  first 
he  must  know  whether  he  is  to  reply  in  the 
capacity  of  historian  or  that  of  a  man  of  re- 
ligious faith.  Surely  we  may  retort  that  we 
desire  Dr.  Adolf  Harnack  to  reply,  and  we 
were  not  aware  there  is  more  than  one  Dr. 
Harnack.  Some  men  have  greater  minds  than 
the  rest  of  us,  but  they  have  not  more  minds. 
And  thus,  I  conclude,  if  we  are  going  to  accept 
at  all  the  reality  of  this  Christ  of  whom  we 
have  been  speaking,  we  must  do  it  with  our 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      159 

one  mind  and  with  the  whole  of  it,  whatever 
be  the  intellectual  consequences. 

But  it  is  with  the  consequences  of  Jesus 
Christ  for  religion  that  here  we  are  more  con- 
cerned. It  means  such  a  faith  as  that  which 
we  found  such  problems  as  suffering  and  sin 
forced  us  to  seek — a  faith  in  God  as  personally 
loving  and  saving  us  and  indeed  our  God  and 
our  Father.  'He  that  hath  seen  me,'  said  Jesus, 
'hath  seen  the  Father;  how  sayest  thou  then, 
Show  us  the  Father?'  Is  this  then  the  answer 
to  that  profound  cry  of  the  human  soul  that 
stretches  past  the  impersonal  laws  and  processes 
of  nature  for  the  living  God  and  cries :  'O  that 
I  might  find  Him'?  There  are  many  minds 
which  so  unquestioningly  accept  Christian  faith 
that  they  have  never  doubted  this  answer  is 
entirely  true;  there  are  others  which  are  so 
confirmedly  agnostic  that  they  have  never  given 
it  even  a  moment's  credence.  There  is  a  cer- 
tain want  of  realisation  of  the  issue  at  stake 
in  both  of  these  attitudes  of  mind.  I  think  it 
is  when  a  man  realises  what  it  means  not  to 
believe  thus  about  God  that  he  is  driven  again 


i6o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

to  Christ  with  the  words :  'Lord,  I  believe,  help 
Thou  mine  unbelief;'  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  is  when  he  in  some  degree  realises  what  a 
stupendous  thing  it  is  to  think  of  God  as  thus 
loving  and  saving  him  that  it  seems  really  im- 
possible to  be  true,  and  he  is  thrown  back  again 
into  doubt.  I  do  not  understand  either  a  satis- 
fied unbelief  or  a  facile  faith. 

Let  us,  then  as  a  poet  who  knew  both  un- 
belief and  faith1  bids  us,  'consider  it  again.' 
Is  it  surely  true — this  gospel,  familiarity  with 
the  sound  of  which  has  dulled  our  minds  to  the 
magnitude  of  its  amazingness?  We  know,  of 
course,  that  many  noble  teachers  have  preached 
to  men  the  love  of  God.  In  particular,  Jesus 
did  so.  But  if  these  were  just  human  opinions, 
and  if  even  Jesus  was  no  more  than  a  pure- 
minded  and  guileless  Galilean  peasant  who  has 
been  dead  now  these  many  hundred  years — 
such  a  'faithful,  tormented,  questioning,  bat- 
tling man'  who  'died  with  broken  hopes,'  as 
that    of    Gustav    Frenssen's    popular    story2 — 

*A.  H.  Clough. 

2  The  Story  of  Jesus:  Retold  by  a  Modern  Disciple.    Trans- 
lated from  the  German  of  G.  Frenssen  by  Dr.  Archibald  Duff. 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST     161 

why  shall  I  build  my  faith  on  their  ideas  when 
there  is  nothing  to  show  of  fact  which  may  be 
guarantee  that  what  they  say  corresponds  with 
reality?  Speaking  is  easy  work — even  speak- 
ing about  the  love  of  God.  It  is  data  that  the 
gospel  needs.  If  then  there  be  no  such  basis 
of  fact  for  this  gospel,  let  us  not  talk  as  if 
there  were.  To  ask  me  to  believe  it  from 
these  lofty  teachers,  without  any  data,  is  futile; 
the  facts  against  it  are  too  strong.  We  need 
not  become  aggressive  unbelievers,  but  let  us 
be  quiet  at  least.  We  must  probably  give  up 
many  fine  thoughts  and  fond  hopes — not,  cer- 
tainly, all  fine  thoughts  about  life  or  fond 
hopes,  but  the  deepest  of  them  and  the  dearest 
— and  we  may  as  well  give  up,  except  in  the 
sense  of  soliloquy,  our  prayers.  The  world  be- 
comes chillier,  darker,  emptier.  But  we  must 
just  live  a  little  in  it  and  love  a  little  in  it  and 
work  a  little  in  it  and  then  die  out  of  it  as 
every  one  else  has  to  do.  So  do  we,  at  times, 
tell  ourselves  that,  if  there  be  no  assured  gospel 
of  a  Father's  love,  it  does  not  matter  so  much, 
and  we  can  get  on  well  enough  with  an  agnostic 


1 62  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

mind  and  a  stoic  heart.  But  this  mood  is  a 
mask  which  may  at  any  moment  fall  off.  'Just 
when  we  're  safest'  (as  Browning  says  in  lines 
too  familiar  for  quotation)  something  wakens, 
now  a  hope  and  now  a  fear,  which  makes  us 
feel  that  it  matters  even  infinitely  whether  there 
be  not  more  to  be  said  of  the  great  mysteries 
of  God  and  the  soul,  of  sin  and  salvation,  of 
life  and  death,  than  the  stars  and  the  hills  and 
the  seas  can  ever  say  or  even  than  we  can  say 
to  ourselves  in  our  dim-lit  minds  and  defiled 
hearts.  We  stretch  once  more  the  hand  and 
strain  the  ear.     It  is  in  vain: — 

'Dextrae  jungere  dextram 
Non  datur,  ac  veras  audire  et  reddere  voces/1 

Why,  then,  may  not  Christ,  offered  as  'the 
Word  of  God,'  be  accepted  as  the  word  we 
seek  and  need?  Because,  it  is  replied,  what 
is  supernatural  is  inadmissible.  Well,  as  a 
theorem,  as  an  abstract  idea  in  a  conception  of 
the  world,  the  supernatural  may  well  seem  in- 

1  Virgil's  JEne'id,  i.  408.     ('To  clasp  hand  with  hand  is  not 
given,  nor  to  hear  or  utter  reliable  speech.') 


THE  REALITY  OF  CHRIST      163 

admissible.  But  this  gospel  comes  to  us  here 
not  as  a  bare  abstract  theorem;  it  comes  in  a 
person.  Look,  then,  straight  into  the  eyes  of 
Jesus  Christ.  Examine  Him,  with  an  earnest 
and  a  fair  mind,  in  history;  face  Him,  with  an 
awakened  and  frank  conscience,  in  moral  and 
spiritual  life.  What  the  result  may  be  for  any 
other  is  not  for  me  to  say,  but  I  will  say  what 
for  me  is  the  result.  It — a  theorem  about  a 
divine,  supernatural  word — is  incredible;  it  is 
too  remote  from  reality  to  be  convincing  or 
even  interesting,  and  is  far  too  unlikely  to  be 
true.  But  He  is  indisputable;  He  is  too  real 
to  be  denied  and  far  'too  good'  not  'to  be  true.' 
I  ended  the  last  chapter  with  an  angels' 
chorus.  We  may  be  very  unfit  to  join  in  that. 
But  we  may — indeed,  must  we  not? — join  in 
the  confession  of  those  first  disciples,  men  on 
earth  like  ourselves,  who  said  to  Jesus:  'Lord, 
to  whom  shall  we  go?  Thou  hast  the  words 
of  eternal  life.  And  we  believe  and  are  sure 
that  Thou  art  that  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living 
God/ 


V 
THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM 


'There  are  two  happinesses,  that  of  nature  and  that 
of  conquest — two  equilibria,  that  of  Greece  and  that  of 
Nazareth — two  kingdoms,  that  of  the  natural  man  and 
that  of  the  regenerate  man.' 

HENRI-FREDERIC    AMIEL. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM 

The  topic  discussed  in  the  last  chapter  is  the 
crucial  question  about  Jesus  Christ,  and  yet  it 
does  not  end  the  challenge  which  life  presents 
to  faith.  We  must  now  go  on  to  consider  the 
facts  of  life,  or  some  typical  aspects  of  them, 
with  a  further  question  in  our  minds — the 
question,  namely,  of  whether  the  view  of  things 
expressed  in  what  we  associate  with  Jesus 
Christ  is  sufficient  and  adequate  for  life,  or 
whether  other  points  of  view  are  not  larger 
and  richer.  I  shall,  in  this  chapter,  consider 
this  in  the  light  of  what  may  be  called  the 
positive  of  human  life — the  claim  of  humanism 
to  be  the  real  and  rich  way  of  living;  in  the 
chapter  following  we  must  consider  the  nega- 
tive side. 

What  is  meant  by  the  former  of  these  issues 
may  be  stated  thus.     Let  it  be  admitted  that 
much  of  what  has  been  said  about  Christ  is  or 
12  167 


1 68  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

may  be  true.  Let  it  be  admitted  that  He  is, 
in  a  very  real  sense,  a  supreme  and  even  super- 
natural Figure,  and  also  that  He  is  truly  the 
source  of  an  immediate  knowledge  of  and 
communion  with  God.  Still — here  is  the  ques- 
tion now  before  us — is  not  this,  after  all,  but 
one  element  in  life?  Is  not  human  experience 
in  this  great  and  interesting  world  a  far 
broader  and  more  manifold  thing  than  is  cov- 
ered by  this  internal  colloquy  between  Jesus 
Christ  and  the  soul  about  repentance  and  for- 
giveness and  the  like?  Can  you  then  put  life 
under  the  single  domination  of  even  this 
Master  and  under  the  one  law  even  of  His 
authority?  In  short — and  even  where  it  is 
admitted  that  Jesus  Christ  is,  in  a  real  sense, 
true  for  religion — is  He  and  is  His  gospel 
adequate  for  all  that  this  wonderful  life  of 
ours  contains,  and  especially  for  its  great 
human  aspects  which  give  to  it  so  much  of  its 
interest  and  richness  and  sweetness  and,  despite 
all  its  sorrows,  joy? 

These  questions  of  to-day  are  not  in  them- 
selves new,  but  they  are  finding  new  and  very 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    169 

distinct  expressions  in  our  age.  The  modern 
mind  has  not  only  a  larger  conception  of  the 
physical  universe  than  was  known  in  the  times 
when  the  gospel  was  first  preached,  but  also 
a  larger  sense  of  human  life  than  at  least  the 
Jews  of  those  days  knew.  And  its  motto  cer- 
tainly is  im  Ganzen — whether  or  not  always 
im  Gut  en  or  im  Schonen — resolut  zu  leben. 
It  is  ready  and  waiting  to  say  'Yes'  to  life. 
Now  it  is  easy  to  perceive  how  impatient  a 
mood  like  this  becomes  to  anything  which  is 
of  the  nature  of  a  cordon  round  any  part  of 
life,  or  seems  to  lay  any  limiting  law  upon 
ideas  and  aims  in  life  which  it  is  formulating 
for  itself.  And  it  is  just  this  which  much  in 
the  mind  of  to-day  finds  in  religion  and  not 
least  in  Christianity.  Thus  arises  a  new  chal- 
lenge to  the  standards  and  sanctions  of  an  older 
view  of  life.  No  one  has  appreciated  this 
phase  of  modern  feeling  better  than  Dr. 
Eucken,  and  I  shall  quote  one  of  his  many 
statements  of  it: — 

'In  its  rich  unfolding  of  life,  the  modern  world 
has  brought  an  untold  wealth  of  things  new  and 


i7o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

great  whose  Influence  no  one  can  escape  and  whose 
fruits  we  all  enjoy.  But  with  this  incontestable 
gain  there  is  closely  interwoven  a  characteristic 
tendency  which  is  deeply  involved  in  doubt  and 
conflict.  Since  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  modern  world  has  wrought  out  a  new 
type  of  life,  which  departs  widely  from  the  Chris- 
tian. .  .  .  The  greater  the  strength  and  self-con- 
sciousness which  this  new  t)^pe  acquires,  the  more 
evident  it  becomes  that  it  is  incompatible  with 
Christianity;  in  fact,  the  fundamental  tendencies 
of  the  two  run  directly  counter  to  each  other. 
Their  peaceable  and  friendly  co-operation,  such  as 
existed  in  earlier  times,  becomes  impossible ;  a  clear 
understanding  is  increasingly  necessary ;  continually 
harsher  is  the  rejection  of  Christianity  by  those  who 
follow  the  specifically  modern  tendency.' x 

Thus  is  it  that  we  have  in  the  present  day 
non-Christian  ideals  of  life  held  up  to  us  which 
not  only  do  not  accept  the  Christian  ideal  but 
vigorously  oppose  it  as — to  use  a  phrase  of 
Eucken's  in  some  other  place — 'the  enemy  of 
the  energy  and  truth  of  life.'  These  last  words 
express  a  feeling  towards  the  law  and  gospel 
of  Christ  which  to-day  finds  many  forms  of 
expression  and  which  demands  examination. 

1  The  Problem  of  Human  Life,  p.  297. 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    171 

Probably  the  two  most  notable  exponents  of 
this  are  Nietzsche  and  George  Bernard  Shaw. 
The  former  has  rightly  seen  that  the  only  way 
finally  to  'smash'  Christianity  is  to  dethrone  its 
ethical  ideal.  'So  long  as  men  go  on  admiring 
Jesus  and  making  Him  their  ideal,  no  good  will 
come  from  disproving  the  gospel  history.'1  So 
Nietzsche  preaches  a  'noble  morality'  which 
exults  in  a  spirit  the  reverse  of  that  of  Christ, 
and  declares  humility  and  sacrifice  to  be  the 
principles  only  of  the  weaklings  of  humanity.2 
Nearer  home,  Mr.  Shaw  holds  forth  a  gospel 
of  freedom  through  the  rejection  of  all  kinds  of 
moral  sanctions  or  restraints,  whether  they  be 
Christian  or  any  other,  and  the  refusal  to  allow 
any  consideration  of  ethical  differentiation  to 
stand  in  the  way  of  whatever  impulse  is  able  to 
command.  From  this  freedom  many  people 
would  turn  back  when  they  see  how  it  works  out 
in  life;  but  not  so  Mr.  Shaw,  who  writes: — 

'If  a  young  woman,  in  a  mood  of  strong  reaction 
against  the  preaching  of  duty  or  self-sacrifice  and 

1  Figgis's  Civilisation  at  the  Cross-Roads,  p.  59. 

2  I  shall  refer  to  Nietzsche's  'noble  morality'  in  the  closing 
chapter. 


172 


THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 


the  rest  of  it,  were  to  tell  me  that  she  was  deter- 
mined not  to  murder  her  own  instincts  and  throw 
away  her  life  in  obedience  to  a  mouthful  of  empty 
phrases,  I  should  say  to  her:  "By  all  means,  do 
as  you  propose.  Try  how  wicked  you  can  be.  It 
is  precisely  the  same  experiment  as  trying  how 
good  you  can  be."  ' 1 

These  instances  (on  the  latter  of  which  I  shall 
say  a  few  words  later  in  this  chapter)  may  be 
extreme.  But  their  point  of  view  is  deep  in 
the  mind  of  the  modern  man,  and  I  am  inclined 
to  think  even  deeper  in  the  mind  of  the  modern 
woman — the  view,  namely,  that  there  are  re- 
gions in  life  which  are  a  law  to  themselves,  and 
in  which  any  other  authority,  even  in  the  name 
of  religion  or  of  Christ  Himself,  is  (to  use 
again  Eucken's  phrase)  'an  enemy  to  the  energy 
and  truth  of  life.'  Do  not  many  persons — 
neither  Nietzscheans  nor  Shavians,  but  morally 
clothed  and  rationally  in  their  right  mind — feel 
something  of  this  in  relation,  for  example,  to 
art  or  to  science?  These  are  realms  where  the 
whole  interest  of  the  gospel  seems  not  so  much 

1  The  Sanity  of  Art,  p.  44. 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    173 

untrue  as  irrelevant.  If  a  man  will  put  this 
to  the  test  he  may  be  surprised  to  find  how  far 
it  will  lead  him.  Let  him,  to  name  one  case, 
really  steep  his  soul  in  the  beauty  and  the  pas- 
sion that  are  in  Greek  literature — and  if  we 
are  going  to  claim  an  autonomy  from  even 
Christian  authority  for  certain  spheres  of  life, 
let  it  be  done  for  the  sake  of  the  balanced  and 
serene  spirit  that  breathes  and  burns  in  Sopho- 
cles or  Sappho  rather  than  at  the  instance  of 
any  neurotic  and  noisy  moderns — and  he  will 
find  himself  in  a  world  where  the  questions  and 
calls  of  the  gospel  simply  lose  interest  and 
almost  meaning.  Nor  is  it  only  in  connection 
with  such  matters  of  the  higher  intellectual  life, 
as  art  or  science,  that  this  autonomy  asserts 
itself.  It  is  not  less  strong  in  the  emotional 
life.  Thus  do  not  many  persons — though  they 
may  defend  their  minds  from  formulating  it — 
feel  in  the  same  way  about  human  love,  which 
comes,  when  it  does  come,  as  an  absolute  which 
is  its  own  lord?  It  is  not  always  easy  to  recon- 
cile with  thoughts  such  as  these  the  supremacy 
and  sufficiency  of  the  gospel  which  would  crown 


174  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

Christ  as  the  law  of  life  and  'Lord  of  all.'  The 
result  of  this,  even  when  it  does  not  go  the 
length  of  positively  anti-Christian  assertions 
of  moral  independence  of  the  principles  of  the 
gospel,  is,  as  I  have  already  indicated,  a  feeling 
that  there  is  a  larger  life  to  be  lived  than  the 
Christian,  and  that  the  wise  man  will  be  (to  use 
Mr.  Edmund  Gosse's  phrase  about  Walter 
Pater)  'not  all  for  Apollo  nor  all  for  Christ.'1 
Here  is  a  far  more  insidious  question  for  faith 
than  anything  said  by  a  blatant  materialism. 
The  suggestion  finds  perfect  expression  in  a 
sentence  or  two  from  the  pen  of  one  of  the 
most  refinedly  sceptical  minds  in  contemporary 
European  literature.  In  one  of  M.  Anatole 
France's  books  a  convert  to  the  Christian  life 
says  of  her  spiritual  instructor  that  she  be- 
lieves him  'car  il  possede  la  verite!  To  which 
Nicias,  the  typical  cultured  second-century 
Greek,  smilingly  replies:  'Et  mot,  je  possede 
les  verites.  II  vl en  a  qn'une;  je  les  at  tontes. 
Je  suis  plus  riche  que  lui.'2     This  is  a  thought 

1  Critical  Kitcats,  by  E.  Gosse,  p.  270. 

2  Thais,  2*8. 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    175 

of  life  which  insinuates  itself  deep  into  the 
mind  of  to-day — the  thought  of  life  as  some- 
thing larger,  richer,  more  manifold  than  the 
Christian  view  of  it.  Here  is  something  we 
must  adjust  to  the  claim  of  Him  we  call  Mas- 
ter and  'Lord  of  all.' 

It  is  obvious  that  the  ascetic  solution,  which 
is  the  official  answer  of  a  large  section  of 
Christendom,  does  not  meet  the  case.  Apart 
altogether  from  its  being  really  not  true  to  the 
spirit  of  Jesus  Christ,  who  came  eating  and 
drinking,  or  to  the  practice  of  the  apostles  who, 
amid  the  splendid  sacrifices  they  made  for  the 
gospel,  did  not  proscribe  or  renounce  the  world 
of  human  life,  it  is  plain  that  if  the  ascetic 
principle  were  completely  and  universally  ap- 
plied it  would  result  not  in  the  salvation  but 
merely  in  the  suicide  of  the  race.1  Asceticism 
may  be  justified  in  certain  individuals  or  even 

1  The  Roman  Catholic  way  of  escape  from  this  is  by  di- 
viding Christian  life  into  two  grades — the  higher  saintly  rule 
of  asceticism  (including  abstinence  from  marriage),  which  is 
the  'religious'  life,  and  a  lower  'secular'  Christian  life  which 
is  'sufficient'  for  those  in  the  world.  This  is  an  utterly  non- 
Christian  distinction,  alien  to  the  whole  New  Testament, 
which  knows  no  distinction  between  a  saint  and  a  Christian. 


176  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

periods,  and  it  reminds  the  world  that  Christ 
demands  surrender  and  sacrifice,  but  it  is  not 
in  itself  either  a  possible  or  a  Christian  general 
principle  of  life.  On  the  other  hand,  it  must 
be  said  that  the  modern  treatment  of  this  ques- 
tion is  apt  to  be  slight  and  easy,  and  often 
amounts  to  little  more  than  the  making  of  Jesus 
Christ  a  kind  of  Honorary  President  of  art 
and  letters  and  romance  and  other  humane  in- 
terests. This  is  but  to  play  with  the  problem. 
Jesus  Christ  is  nothing  if  He  be  not  the  Lord. 
His  is  not  faintly  to  colour  things  with  a  Chris- 
tian or  semi-Christian  tinge;  His  is  to  com- 
mand— to  be  the  supreme  and  final  authority. 
'Where  He  comes,'  as  a  hymn  puts  it,  'He 
comes  to  reign.'  To  speak  of  another  Christ 
than  this  is  indeed  not  so  much  to  play  with  as 
rather  to  insult  the  gospel.  The  problem  is  to 
relate  this  Christ — the  Lord — to  the  varied 
humanistic  aspects  of  life  which  so  loudly  assert 
their  own  autonomy  and  which,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted, are  not  easily  annexed  to  the  gospel. 
It  is  a  problem  to  be  dealt  with  certainly  in  a 
broader  spirit  than  that  which  relegates  God's 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    177 

beautiful  world  and  the  human  nature  God  has 
given  us  to  the  territory  of  the  Evil  One;  but 
not  less  certainly  must  it  be  dealt  with  in  a  more 
unmistakably  and  distinctively  Christian  way 
than  that  which  assigns  to  Jesus  Christ  in  any 
region  of  life  a  merely  complimentary  position. 

The  few  examples  already  given  of  the  ques- 
tion before  us  divide  into  two  classes,  and  these 
are  entitled  to  be  distinguished  and  separately 
discussed.  The  claim  for  an  extra-Christian 
autonomy  for  individual  and  subjective  ends 
such  as  love  or  freedom  (in  the  personal  sense) 
or  happiness  is  one  thing;  another  is  when  that 
is  claimed  for  such  general  objective  ends  as 
artistic  beauty  or  scientific  truth.  I  shall  con- 
sider first  the  one  and  then  the  other  of  these; 
in  both  cases  let  us  try  to  deal  with  the  matter 
not  as  an  academic  argument  about  an  abstrac- 
tion called  life,  but  as  it  is  proved  in  living  ex- 
perience. 

When  we  look  in  this  way  at  cases  of  the 
former  class  the  answer  is  not  far  to  seek,  for 
life  itself  supplies  it  with  unmistakable  clear- 
ness.   Nothing  is  in  life  more  certain  than  this, 


178  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

that  for  the  individual  to  reject  all  Christian 
or  other  authority  in  order  to  give  such  things 
as  happiness  or  freedom  or  love  their  uncon- 
trolled and  absolute  autonomy  is  the  direct  and 
certain  road  to  failure  and  disaster.  I  propose 
to  look  at  this  more  particularly  in  connection 
with  the  last  named — a  topic  on  which  it  is 
easy  to  write  foolishly  and  falsely,  but  a  thing 
of  profound  influence  in  human  lives  and  per- 
haps the  best  illustration  for  our  discussion. 

Love — the  word  being  used  here  in  its  popu- 
lar sense — is  the  theme  of  much  literature, 
including  nearly  all  novels.  Well,  if  we  read 
almost  any  batch  of  representative  modern 
novels — not  excluding  even  morally  unprofit- 
able ones,  if  they  are  true — which  deal  power- 
fully and  seriously  with  the  story  of  lives  which 
have  made  this  an  absolute  directing  law  of 
conduct,  what  do  we  find?  I  think  we  find  that 
hardly  a  book  of  genuine  authority  and  con- 
vincingness does  not  in  the  end  make  this  lead 
to  disaster.  That  disaster,  be  it  noted,  may 
not  be  always  an  immediate  unhappiness.  But 
it  will  mean — as  so  surely  it  does  in  life — a 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    179 

soul  that  dwindles  away  from  nobleness  and 
gets  smaller  and  meaner  with  the  years.  This 
is  the  moral  not  only  of  one  kind  of  writer  or 
one  type  of  character  but  of  all  really  worth 
counting.  It  is  the  moral  of  the  career  of  a 
distinguished  being  like  Anna  Karenina  as 
much  as — I  apologise  to  her  most  humbly  for 
placing  her  even  for  a  moment  in  such  low 
company — that  of  any  of  Mr.  Hitchen's  de- 
generates. Now  it  is  certainly  no  theological 
or  moral  orthodoxy  which  makes  such  books 
end  thus.  It  is  just  life.  For  life  says  two 
main  things  about  this  human  passion.  One  is 
— and  let  poets  and  novelists  to  the  end  of 
time  celebrate  it  with  all  their  powers — that 
here  is  Das  irdische  Gliick,  concerning  which 
the  heart  that  knows  it  says,  as  of  nothing  else 
that  is  human:  T  have  lived.'  The  other  thing 
is  that  therefore  to  isolate  this  in  an  autonomy 
for  life  and  make  it  a  sole  law  unto  itself  is 
inevitably  to  ruin  it.  Indeed,  love  can  be  itself 
and  its  highest  only  when  it  is  related  to  and 
regulated  by  other  parts  of  the  organism  of 
life.     Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  in  his  Paolo  and 


i8o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

Francesca — by  no  means  a  proround  treatment 
of  an  immortal  theme — makes  the  lover  in  the 
climax  of  his  passion  say: — 

'Now  all  the  bonds 
Which  held  me  I  cast  off — honour,  esteem, 
All  ties,  all  friendships,  peace  and  life  itself: 
You  only  in  this  universe  I  want.'1 

A  cavalier  poet2  knew  something  truer  than 
this  who  wrote  what  I  will  call  the  finest  couplet 
that  chivalry  ever  inspired: — 

'I  could  not  love  thee,  dear,  so  much 
Loved  I  not  honour  more.' 

If  Anna  Karenina,  with  all  her  intelligence  of 
understanding  and  all  her  capacity  of  feeling 
and  sensitiveness  to  life,  could  have  but  known 
this  too,  her  bright  spirit  would  not  have  gone 
out  in  the  darkness  of  that  tragedy  at  the  rail- 
way station  in  Moscow,  which  we  still  read  with 
a  pain  and  horror  as  if  it  had  happened — as, 
indeed,  did  it  not? — to  a  personal  friend. 
This,  then,  is  a  plain  fact  of  life  and  of  the 

1  Paolo  and  Francesca,  Act  iv. 

2  Richard  Lovelace. 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    181 

best  literature  about  life — that  to  make  such 
things  as  those  which  have  been  named  abso- 
lute and  autonomous  is  to  defeat  and  destroy 
them.  And  the  reason  of  this  fact  is  also  plain, 
and  indeed  has  been  already  given.  It  is  that 
life  is  an  organic  unity,  and  no  part  of  it  can 
be  made  absolute  in  it  without  confusion  and 
contradiction.  If  we  make  one  thing  the  whole 
thing,  then  the  whole  will  assert  itself  in  re- 
action. This  is  precisely  what  life  does  to  the 
man  or  woman  who  makes  individual  freedom 
or  happiness  or  love  a  thing  by  itself,  separate 
from  life  as  a  whole,  and  a  single  and  absolute 
law:  life  reacts  on  any  one  who  does  that  and 
defeats  these  very  ends.  Here,  one  may  take 
the  occasion  to  remark,  is  the  ruinous  untruth 
in  that  specious  justification  for  yielding  to 
what  is  called  carnal  temptation,  which  tells 
people  that  to  do  so  is  only  to  obey  the  nature 
which  has  been  given  them.  This  kind  of  sug- 
gestion— which  perhaps  few  avow  but  more 
than  a  few  feel  and  some  find  difficult  to  an- 
swer— has  its  element  of  truth  as  all  dangerous 
lies  have.     Its  truth  is  that  these  instincts  have 


1 82  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

their  natural  basis  in  the  body,  which  is  part — 
and  a  most  important  part — of  human  nature. 
But  the  untruth  lies  in  treating  the  part  as  if 
it  were  a  whole.  These  instincts  are  not  in 
human  nature  by  themselves,  that  they  may  be 
allowed  to  roam  and  rage  and  reign  as  if  re- 
sponsible only  to  themselves  and  isolated  from 
the  rest  of  what  makes  man.  The  body,  there- 
fore, is  not  to  be  obeyed  when  it  speaks  alone; 
what  is  to  be  obeyed  is  the  whole  man.  And 
man,  while  a  carnal  (the  word  is  used  with 
no  theological  animus  but  simply  in  its  gram- 
matical sense),  is  also  a  rational  and  moral 
and  social  being.  If  he  is  to  listen  to  the  call 
of  his  flesh  he  must  listen  to  it  along  with  the 
reason  and  conscience  and  also  his  responsi- 
bilities to  other  persons.  Obey  yourself  cer- 
tainly; but  your  whole  self.  Else,  as  I  have 
said,  life,  which  is  a  whole,  will  react  on  you 
to  your  ruin. 

What  is  the  next  point  for  us  to  examine  is 
now  clear.  It  obviously  is  to  gain  some  direct- 
ing idea  as  to  what  or  where  is  our  real  as 
distinguished  from  our   false  or  partial   self. 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    183 

Here  may  come  in  the  comment  which  I  said 
I  would  make  on  the  quotation  given  a  few 
pages  back  from  Mr.  Shaw,  about  a  young 
woman  'determined  not  to  murder  her  own 
instincts,'  to  whom  Mr.  Shaw  has  nothing  bet- 
ter to  say  than  that  by  all  means  she  should  be 
as  wicked  as  she  can,  for  it  is  'precisely  the 
same  experiment'  as  being  as  good  as  one  can. 
Now  it  would  be  an  unjust  and  unintelligent 
criticism  to  read  this  as  a  direct  invitation  to 
go — if  the  colloquialism  be  pardonable — to  the 
bad.  It  reads  like  that,  and — what  is  much 
worse — many  persons  will  read  it  thus;  and  in 
this  respect  it  is  an  illustration  of  how  Mr. 
Shaw,  himself  a  moralist,  seems  to  think  it 
amusing  to  recommend  his  message  of  morality 
by  means  of  a  vocabulary  of  vice.  But  the 
author's  point,  I  take  it,  is  that  the  girl  should 
get  free  of  all  merely  external  moral  con- 
straints and  that  her  morality  must  be  her  own. 
This  is  not  only  a  true  but  even  a  Christian 
idea,  though,  I  must  add,  somewhat  success- 
fully disguised.  Certainly  all  really  moral 
conduct  is  from  within.     But  Mr.  Shaw  seems 


1 84  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

to  think  this  is  enough,  and  he  stops  here.  He 
considers  that  if  conduct  be  thus  inward  in  its 
spring  and  motive,  it  does  not  matter  about  its 
ethical  quality.  One  man's  nature  has  a  pas- 
sion for  goodness :  let  him  be  good.  Another's 
has  the  passion  for  badness:  let  him  be  bad. 
'It  is  precisely  the  same  experiment.'  The 
mere  freedom  is  everything.  Now  this  is  in 
practice  to  give  a  general  licence  to  pande- 
monium, but  I  do  not  emphasise  that  at  present. 
What  I  want  to  say  of  it  here  is  that  it  is  no 
true  theory  of  life.  For  life  is  direction  as  well 
as  freedom.  Without  the  former,  the  latter  is 
not  only  dangerous  but  meaningless.  It  is 
telling  a  man  to  drive  fast  and  not  telling  him 
where  to  drive.  Humanity  is  not  simply  a  right 
to  realise  yourself  but  also  a  right  self  to  be  re- 
alised. Augustine  knew  that  as  Mr.  Shaw  does 
not,  and  the  old  doctor  said  a  greater  and  wiser 
and  more  complete  word  than  the  modern 
dramatist  when  he  said :  'Dilige  et  quod  vis  fac.y 
Here  is  the  'do  as  you  propose'  just  as  in  Mr. 
Shaw;  but  here  is  also,  and  first,  the  end  and 
object — and,  of  course,  Augustine  means  that 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    185 

the  love  of  God  and  good  is  the  end.  This  is 
freedom  with  direction  in  it — with  meaning  in 
it.  Any  counsel  which  omits  this  is  counsel 
only  for  beings  less  than  man,  for  man  is  a 
being  with  an  end,  a  self,  which  he  is  to  find, 
create,  achieve.  Mr.  Shaw's  counsel  might  be 
quite  suitable  for  creatures  who  have  neither 
ideal  nor  aspiration,  but  who  are  just  what  they 
are.  Yes,  I  think  I  know  the  kind  of  creatures 
he  should  have  addressed  his  words  to — the 
trolls!  In  one  of  Ibsen's  plays,  these  are  a 
tribe  of  beings  that  live  a  semi-brutish  life, 
with  gusty  passions  and  capricious  impulses; 
and  this  life  is  all  their  ideal,  for  they  have  no 
wish  to  live  the  lives  of  men.  As  one  of  them 
puts  it: — 

'Among  men  the  saying  goes,  "Man,  be  thyself!" 
At  home  here  with  us,  'mid  the  tribe  of  the  trolls, 
The  saying  goes,  "Troll,  to  thyself  be — enough."'1 

'Never  mind,'  says  Mr.  Shaw  to  the  young 
woman,  'about  being  your  true  self;  "be"  to 
your  dominant  gust  of  instinct,  whatever  it  is: 

1  Peer  Gynt,  Act  n.  sc.  vi. 


1 86  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

that  is  enough.'  This  is  mere  trollism.  It  is 
'enough'  for  that  tribe;  it  is  not  enough  for 
human  beings.  It  is  philistine  to  offer  men  and 
women  this  crudity  in  the  great  and  sacred 
name  of  freedom.  But,  as  I  sought  to  be  just 
to  the  quotation,  I  would  also  not  be  unjust 
to  the  author.  It  may  be  that  Mr.  Shaw  needs 
to  be  encouraged  to  think  of  himself  more 
highly  than  apparently  he  does.  Let  him,  then, 
be  assured  that  he  is  not  without  talents  which 
make  him  entitled  to  be  an  instructor  of  human 
beings;  for  it  were  to  be  regretted  if  any  one 
of  whom  this  can  be  said  is  satisfied,  through 
any  excess  of  modesty — beautiful  to  behold  as 
that  is  in  a  writer  in  this  age  when  so  many 
trumpet  themselves — with  the  poor  post  of  be- 
ing a  teacher  merely  of  the  tribe  of  the  trolls. 
With  this  word  of  cheer  I  leave  Mr.  Shaw 
and  pass  on  to  our  question  of  what  is  our  true 
and  complete  as  distinguished  from  a  false  self, 
and  I  shall  say  at  once  what  is  the  main  and 
indeed  the  only  thing  I  have  to  say.  There  is 
absolutely  no  one  with  whom  this  question  can 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    187 

be  considered  comparable  to  Jesus  Christ.  He 
is  no  teacher  of  the  tribe  of  the  trolls.  'In  Him 
was  life,  and  the  life  was  the  light  of  men.' 
Many  and  many  a  calamitous  conception  of 
human  life  has  been  theirs  who  have  formed 
their  idea  of  it  apart  from  Him;  never,  never 
have  regrets  gathered  in  fhe  end  in  the  mind 
of  any  one  who  learned  the  thought  of  his  true 
self  from  Jesus  Christ.  This  is  not  something 
generally  true  of  human  life  at  large.  It  is 
most  personally  verifiable  and  verified  in  the 
individual  mind  and  conscience.  When  any  one 
of  us  really  will  bring  his  life  into  the  presence 
of  Christ,  he  gets  not  merely  a  new  thought  of 
God  but  also,  and  perhaps  more  indisputably, 
a  new  thought  of  himself.  And  this  is  not  only 
— though  frequently  it  is  this  to  begin  with — 
a  realisation  of  his  bad  self  in  a  sense  of  failure 
and  sin;  it  is  also  a  vision  of  his  truer  nature 
and  of  what  his  life  should  be  and  is  in  the 
worthier  thought  of  it.  Jesus  Christ  is  in  a 
marvellous  way  identical  with  a  man's  best  self. 
This  is  as  real  a  fact  of  moral  experience  as  it 


1 88  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

is  a  real  fact  of  religious  experience,  that  when 
we  have  fellowship  with  Christ  we  have  fellow- 
ship with  even  God  too.  What  a  wonderful 
Person  is  this,  whom  to  know  is  to  know  God, 
and  to  whom  to  come  is  to  come  to  one's  very 
self! 

Here  then  we  seem  to  be  finding  the  answer 
to  the  question  we  set  out  to  investigate,  of 
how  the  great  humanities  of  life,  such  as  hap- 
piness and  freedom  and  love,  are  to  be  related 
to  Him  who  is  called  'Lord  of  all.'  In  a  word, 
the  answer  is  this,  these  have  to  be  related  to 
this  unity  of  the  true  self,  and  this  true  self 
finds  itself  in  Christ.  How  this  may  work  out 
with  such  things  as  those  which  have  been 
named  cannot,  of  course,  be  set  down  in  general 
terms;  for  human  life  is  nothing  if  not  indi- 
vidual, and  Jesus  Christ  is  essentially  a  teacher 
and  saviour  of  persons.  But  certainly  it  does 
work  out  in  a  way  which  justifies  Christ's  own 
assertion,  that  He  comes  not  to  destroy  life 
but  to  give  it  more  abundantly.  A  modern 
poet,  in  a  remarkable  poem,  has  expressed  the 
fear  it  will  turn  out  otherwise,  and  that  a  self 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    189 

given  to  Christ  means  a  negation  of  the  sweet 
humanities  of  life: — 

'Though  I  knew  His  love  who  followed, 

Yet  was  I  sore  afraid 
Lest  having  Him,  I  must  have  naught  beside.'1 

But  an  apostle  says  all  things  are  ours  when 
we  are  Christ's.  Well,  in  life  it  must  be  tested. 
Test  freedom  thus  or  happiness — on  the  one 
hand,  the  doing  whatever  we  'propose'  and  the 
gratifying  indiscriminately  of  our  'instincts,'  or, 
on  the  other,  'the  faith,  which  experience  will 
ratify  in  due  time,  that  our  desires  are  less  the 
ministers  than  the  destroyers  of  life  until  they 
are  subdued  into  glad  obedience  to  His  holy 
and  hallowing  will.'2  Take  even  love  and  test 
it  thus,  and  see  if  this  be  not  true  in  life — that 
the  more  room  two  hearts  make  for  the  loving 
and  following  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  more  room 
they  also  make  for  the  deepest  and  most  lasting 
love  of  one  another.  I  neither  deny  nor  disguise 
another  side  to  this — namely,  that  there  are 
places  in  life  where  Christ  may  mean  that  some 

1  Francis  Thompson,  The  Hound  of  Heaven. 

2  Hort's  The  Way,  the  Truth,  the  Life,  p.  148. 


i9o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

human  claim  is  to  be  denied.     And  is  there  one 
of  us  who  does  not  know  in  his  heart  that  this 
must  be,  and  that  a  Christ  who  found  in  us  noth- 
ing to  curb  and  even  cut  away  is  not  any  true 
Master  or  Saviour?     But  neither  is  even  this 
a  mere  negation  of  life.     Where  it  lays  claim 
on  some  natural  liberty  or  enjoyment,  it  leads 
— when  Christ  is  in  it — to  a  nobler  freedom 
and  a  higher  happiness;  and  even  where  it  de- 
nies some   demand  of  the  heart,   it  can  find, 
better   than    the    poet,    a    love    'all    breathing 
human  passion  far  above.' x    Here  is  something 
which  may  sound  unreal  and  mystical.     It  is, 
however,  the  surest  thing  in  the  experience  of 
many  a  Christian  man  or  woman:  of  this  one 
who  has  cast  away  many  prospects  to  give  his 
young  life  to  some  hard  task  for  Christ's  sake, 
and  found  thus  an  incomparable  liberty  and 
joy;  or  of  that  one  walking  at  Christ's  call  a 
lonely  road,  and  never  feeling  except  in  dream 
the  touch  of  the  child  that  might  have  been 
hers,  yet  with  a  heart  rich  with  love's  deepest 
meanings    and    full    of   thankfulness    for   life. 

1  Keats's  Ode  to  a  Grecian  Urn,  iii. 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    191 

{Les  renoncements  d'tin  cceur  consacre  a  Dien 
sont  pen  de  chose  a  cote  des  benedictions  et  des 
enrichissements  dont  toute  dine  pieuse  fait  la 
journaliere  experience.' x  But  this  is  something 
not  too  much  to  be  talked  about.  It  is  con- 
vincingly to  be  read  not  on  any  page  of  a  book 
but  in  the  lives — even  in  the  very  faces — of 
the  bond-slaves  of  Christ. 

I  now  pass  on  to  the  second  part  of  our 
question,  and  this  must  be  dealt  with  more 
briefly.  It  is  plain,  in  the  first  place,  that  the 
relation  of  the  law  and  gospel  of  Christ  to  such 
universal  and  objective  ideals  as  scientific  truth 
or  artistic  beauty  is  a  wider  one  than  that  of 
such  individual  and  subjective  aims  as  those 
we  have  been  considering.  These  general 
ideals  are  truly  of  God,  and  the  promotion  of 
them  is  a  part  of  His  praise  and  service.  They 
are  fundamentally  religious,  and  it  is  not  in- 
conceivable how  they  even  may  seem  worthy 

1  Qu'est-ce  que  le  Christianisme?  Reflexions  d'un  pasteur 
la'ique,  par  Louis  Goumaz,  p.  138.  (This  book  contains  a 
critical  examination  of  The  Fact  of  Christ;  and  it  is  a  pleas- 
ure to  quote  from  a  critic  who  is  always  courteous  and  ap- 
preciative to  a  writer  with  whom  he  is  not  always  in  agree- 
ment.) 


1 92  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

rivals  to  a  religion  of  personal  piety.  It  is 
indeed  important  to  remember  that  religion  is 
of  wider  scope  than  merely  human  good  or 
human  need — though  out  of  these  human 
things  it  may  have  arisen  in  history — and  that 
not  merely  the  soul  of  the  Christian  but  'the 
whole  earth'  is  'full  of  the  glory  of  God.'  So 
when  science  is  investigating  and  art  depicting 
and  interpreting  the  world,  it  is  indeed  declar- 
ing God's  glory  which  is  in  it,  and  His  Name 
who  is,  in  the  words  of  the  first  article  of  the 
Creed,  God  the  Father  Almighty,  maker  of 
heaven  and  earth.'  Certainly  in  this  is  some- 
thing much  more  than  an  individualistic  pursuit 
of  selfish  freedom,  happiness,  or  passion.  The 
relation  to  religion  of  servants  of  the  Creator 
like  Darwin  or  Watts  must  not  be  mixed  up 
with  the  claims  of  neurotics  and  anarchists  who 
know  neither  the  true  God  nor  the  true  man. 
I  shall  endeavour  to  consider  this  second  part 
of  our  problem  (as  we  did  also  the  first  part) 
practically;  but  one  remark  of  a  speculative 
character  may  be  made  at  this  point,  as  we 
begin  to  ask  what  is  the  relation  of  such  things 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    i 


93 


as  science  and  art  to  religion.  We  may  natu- 
rally think  that  these  may  be  related  to  religion 
in  a  general  theistic  sense  since  God  is  the 
Creator,  but  that  they  are  not  immediately  or 
essentially  to  be  related  to  the  specifically 
Christian  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ.  Now  cer- 
tainly Christianity  is  characteristically  a  human 
salvation.  But  the  boldest  and  loftiest  Chris- 
tian thinking  has  not  therefore  been  content 
to  say  that  it  is  no  more  than  this,  but  has 
claimed  for  Christ  a  cosmical  as  well  as  a 
soteriological  meaning.  In  St.  Paul,  Christ  is, 
as  well  as  the  saviour  of  men,  at  once  the  apxq 
(or  first  principle)  and  the  re'Aos  (or  final  end) 
of  the  created  universe.  'All  things  were  cre- 
ated unto  Him' — that  is,  with  a  view  to  Him 
— and  all  things  are  'summed  up  in  Him;'1  and 
this  high  doctrine  has  its  place  in  the  Creed 
of  Nicaea,  which  asserts  the  cosmical  Christ, 
'by  whom  all  things  were  made,  both  things  in 
heaven  and  things  in  earth,'  prior  to  its  asser- 
tion of  the  soteriological  Christ  'who  for  us 
men  and  for  our  salvation  came  down'  and  so 

1  Colossians  i.  20;  Ephesians  i.  10. 


i94  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

on.  It  is  true  that  Christian  thought — espe- 
cially in  the  West,  where  the  Church  has  been 
occupied  mainly  with  the  thought  of  God  in 
His  saving  relation  to  man — has  not  kept  very 
firm  hold  of  this  conception  nor  fruitfully  de- 
veloped it.  On  this  Lightfoot's  words  are  not 
irrelevant  to  our  present  discussion: — 

'How  much  our  theological  conceptions  suffer  in 
breadth  and  fulness  by  this  neglect,  a  moment's 
reflection  will  show.  How  much  more  hearty 
would  be  the  sympathy  of  theologians  with  the  rev- 
elations of  science  and  the  developments  of  history, 
if  they  habitually  connected  them  with  the  opera- 
tion of  the  same  Divine  Word  who  is  the  centre 
of  all  their  religious  aspirations,  it  is  needless  to 
say.  Through  the  recognition  of  this  idea,  with  all 
the  consequences  which  flow  from  it  as  a  living 
influence,  more  than  in  any  other  way,  may  we 
hope  to  strike  the  chords  of  that  "vaster  music" 
which  results  only  from  the  harmony  of  knowledge 
and  faith,  of  reverence  and  research.'1 

On  the  other  hand,  one  must  observe  that  it 
is  easier  to  write  in  a  general  and  rhapsodical 
way  of  a  doctrine  of  this  speculative  character 
than  to  state  the  data  of  reason,  history,  or 

1  Ou  Ctlossians,  p.  116. 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    195 

experience  on  which  it  can  be  based;  and  if 
theology  wishes  to  retain  its  status  as  a  science, 
it  must  always  have  data  for  its  dogmas.  Dr. 
Denney  says  of  such  words  as  those  of  St.  Paul 
which  have  been  quoted,  that  when  they  assert 
Christ  as  the  key  of  creation  it  is  'not  science 
but  wisdom.'1  I  am  inclined — since  wisdom 
suggests  something  experiential  —  rather  to 
speak  of  it  in  the  way  Plato  speaks  of  poetry, 
which  he  says  is  written  'not  by  wisdom  but  by 
a  kind  of  genius  or  inspiration.'2  And  the 
genius  or  inspiration  at  the  root  of  this  superb 
thesis  of  faith  is  of  the  right  'kind,'  for  it  is 
this — that  we  cannot  err  in  the  direction  of 
thinking  too  magnificently  of  Jesus  Christ  and 
His  place  in  the  universe.  Perhaps,  then,  of 
this  article  of  the  Creed  one  may  say,  improv- 
ing on  Tertullian,  Credo  quia  nagnificentissi- 
mum!  At  any  rate — and  not  to  dwell  longer 
on  what  is  speculative — we  may  here  apply  this 
thought  practically.  Let  us,  therefore,  in  our 
discussion,  consider  the  relation  of  such  things 

1  The  Way  Everlasting,  p.  24. 

2  Apology,  22. 


196  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

as  science  or  art  to,  not  religion  in  some  general 
theistic  sense,  but  specifically  to  the  law  and 
gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  ask  what  He  means 
for  these  great  areas  of  human  interest.  To 
this  I  now  turn,  though,  as  I  have  said,  to 
touch  on  it  in  the  briefest  way. 

For  the  sake  of  brevity,  and  also  clearness, 
I  shall  again  treat  chiefly  of  one  example.  As 
in  the  former  section  I  took  love,  let  me  here 
take  art.1  We  are  all  familiar  with  the  dictum, 
'Art  for  art's  sake.'  It  is  or  was  a  kind  of 
flag  for  those  who  would  fight  against  attempts 
on  the  part  of  morals — especially  conventional 
or  puritanical  morals — to  lay  down  limiting 
rules  about  the  subjects  art  should  deal  with 
or  the  way  in  which  it  should  deal  with  them. 
And  in  that  sense  it  was  legitimate  enough. 
Art  has  a  perfect  right  to  object  to  be  made 
the  handmaid  of  the  moralist.  Yet  this  phrase, 
'Art  for  art's  sake,'  is  a  very  inadequate  one. 
The  truth  rather  is  that  both  art  and  morals 
are  means — not  either  a  mean  to  the  other  but 

1  Art  is  a  large  subject,  and  what  follows  may  seem  to  some 
readers  not  equally  applicable  to  all  phases  of  it.  All  that  can 
be  attempted  here  is  a  general  indication  of  a  position. 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    197 

both  ministers  to  a  greater  common  end.  This 
end  is  simply  life  itself.  The  work  of  art  (in, 
that  is,  its  higher  forms)  is  not  something 
merely  self-related  but  is  to  express  life.  It 
expresses  it  not  in  the  dull,  didactic  way  of 
the  scientist  or  the  philosopher  or  the  preacher, 
but  by  making  us  see  it  and  feel  it  as  the  living 
thing  it  really  is.  We  say  of  a  great  artist's 
works  that  they  are  'living,'  and  through  these 
we  live  too  with  a  quickened  perception  and 
a  heightened  emotion.  Instead,  therefore,  of 
the  narrow  and  party  formula  that  'art  is  for 
art's  sake,'  we  must  use  the  larger  and  only 
true  formula,  that  art  is  for  life's  sake.1 

Now  whenever  we  say  this  we  are  already, 
without  more  preliminary  words,  at  the  heart 
of  the  answer  to  our  question  of  the  connection 
between  art  and  the  gospel.  This  connection 
is  not  that  of  a  restrictive  moral  censorship. 
It  is  something  far  more  fundamental.  Art, 
we  say,  is  for  life's  sake.     Well,  life  is  a  new 

1  It  is  since  writing  the  above  that  I  have  noticed  that  this 
last  phrase  is  used  as  the  title  of  one  of  the  essays  in  Mr. 
Arthur  Ransome's  recent  volume,  entitled  Portraits  and  Specu- 
lations. 


198  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

thing  since  Jesus  Christ.  Humanity  has  gained 
a  new  vision  of  what  human  life  is — and  even 
what  the  life  of  nature  is — from  Him.  And 
so  art,  whose  business  is  to  express  life,  has 
everything  to  do  with  what  is  Christian.  This 
is  not  a  merely  theoretical  proposition;  one  of 
the  great  pivot  facts  in  the  history  of  the 
human  mind  is  how  a  deeper  view  of  life  and 
of  nature  has  been  given  by  Christianity  to  the 
whole  spirit  of  man.  That  is  a  shallow  and 
biassed  reading  of  the  subject  which  fastens 
only  or  even  chiefly  on  the  iconoclastic  hostility 
to  art  characteristic  of  some  periods  of  early 
Church  history.  Such  hostility  existed;  and 
much  of  it  was  justifiable  as  an  act  of  war — 
and  in  war  many  violent  things  are  necessary — 
against  vice,  with  which  the  art  of  those  days 
was  in  open  and  systematic  and  intimate  alli- 
ance. But  every  intelligent  and  unprejudiced 
student  either  of  art  or  of  history  knows  these 
iconoclastic  acts  were  mere  incidents,  and  that 
the  really  great  influence  which  Christianity 
had  towards  art  was  to  make  it  new  because, 
as  has  just  been  said,  it  made  life  new.     It  is 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    199 

enough  on  this  to  quote  a  few  words  from  an 
eminent  writer  on  art  who  is  free  from  any 
Christian  bias.  Says  John  Addington  Sym- 
monds : — 

'At  the  same  time,  humanity  acquired  new  facul- 
ties and  wider  sensibilities.  A  profounder  and  more 
vital  feeling  of  the  mysteries  of  the  universe  arose. 
Our  life  on  earth  was  seen  to  be  a  thing  by  no 
means  rounded  in  itself  and  perfect,  but  only  one 
term  of  an  infinite  and  unknown  series.  It  was 
henceforth  impossible  to  translate  the  world  into  the 
language  of  purely  aesthetic  form.  The  striving  of 
the  spirit  marks  the  transition  from  the  ancient  to 
the  modern  world.'1 

Here  is  the  whole  world  of  difference  between 
us  and  that  art  of  ancient  Greece  which,  in  its 
sphere,  is  so  incomparable  that  even  its  secon- 
dary achievements  have  no  rival  to-day.  In 
a  sense,  we  can  never  wonder  enough  at  Hellas; 
and  there  are  invaluable  things  which  the 
human  mind — not  in  relation  to  art  only  but 
for  life — must  ever  learn  and  relearn  at  that 
source.  Yet  this  world — to  which  Christ  has 
come — can  never  again  be  only  Greek,  and  the 

1  The  Greek  Poets,  i.  434. 

14 


200  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

art  which  truly  expresses  our  life  must  be  more 
than  any  pre-Christian  art,  however,  consum- 
mate its  genius.1  Thus  is  it  that  the  Sistine 
Madonna  has  something  which  is  in  no  statue 
of  a  Greek  goddess,  and  in  a  picture  of  Millet 
is  a  meaning  that  is  not  in  the  pastoral  on  the 
urn  of  Keats's  superb  ode.  Nothing  would  be 
more  interesting  than  to  illustrate  this  in  fur- 
ther detail,  but  I  must  not  allow  my  pen  this 
pleasure  now. 

Out  of  this,  one  thing  arises  which  may  be 
mentioned  in  a  word  before  this  chapter  closes. 
I  think  it  now  appears  that  the  protest  against 
what  is  merely  sensual  and  immoral  in  art  has 
more  philosophical  justification  than  at  first 
sight  appears.  For  it  is  a  protest  in  the  name 
of  that  'life'  which  art  is  made  to  serve.  Life 
in  the  truest  and  deepest  sense  is  not  merely 
not  expressed,  but  is  actually  defaced  and  de- 
nied by  an  art  which  appeals  only  or  mainly 

1  This  is  essentially  what  the  finest  modern  spirits  who  have 
been  under  the  spell  of  the  Greek  genius  find  true.  We  see 
this,  for  example,  in  the  development  of  Keats's  mind  or,  in 
a  later  day,  in  Pater.  An  example  of  a  man  who  refused  to 
admit  this  is  Oscar  Wilde;  and  his  work  is  absolutely  un- 
Greek,  while  of  his  life  I  will  not  speak. 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    201 

to  the  grossness  of  fleshly  appetite.  And  no 
plea  of  beauty  can  atone  for  this,  for  'beauty 
is  truth' — truth  not  merely  of  line  and  colour 
and  form,  but  of  deeper  things  too.  Nor  is 
it  enough  to  say  that  some  genius  has  done  it, 
and  therefore  'the  light  that  led  astray  was 
light  from  heaven;'  for,  as  is  most  justly  re- 
marked by  a  writer  whom  I  have  already 
quoted  in  this  chapter  and  elsewhere,  'it  is  not 
genius  which  is  made  in  the  divine  image,  but 
man,'1  and  genius  is  rather  something  man  is 
to  control  and  make  his  servant.  I  cannot  here 
enter  into  the  many  undoubtedly  difficult  ques- 
tions which  are  thus  raised  in  practical  life, 
and  I  state  merely  this  general  position.  On 
the  one  hand,  I  repudiate  Mrs.  Grundy  and 
her  ways.  On  the  other,  I  say  art  is  responsible 
to  life,  and  therefore  an  art  which  degrades  life 
by  expressing  only  its  sensuality — or  similarly, 
a  science  which  does  so  by  hardening  the  spir- 
itual sense  into  a  materialistic  contempt  for 
man — has  about  it  something  radically  false. 
It  is  indeed  a  treachery  against  life.     And  the 

1  Denney's  The  Way  Everlasting,  p.  97. 


202  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

protest  against  it  which  arises  instinctively  in 
every  healthy  mind  is,  even  if  often  wrongly 
expressed  or  based  on  untenable  grounds,  es- 
sentially a  true  protest  in  the  name  of  life,  of 
which  art  is  a  minister  and  of  which  the  rightful 
Lord  is  Christ. 

This  whole  subject  of  Christ  and  humanism 
opens  out  in  manifold  directions  rather  than 
converges  towards  a  conclusion  the  longer  one 
discusses  it,  and  I  shall  therefore  bring  this 
chapter  to  a  close  abruptly.  I  close  it  by  re- 
calling a  remark  from,  I  believe,  a  French 
writer  (but  I  am  sorry  I  am  unable  to  give  the 
reference),  to  the  effect  that  a  man  needs  to 
be  twice  converted — first  from  nature  to  grace 
and  then  back  again  to  nature.  There  is  in 
this  both  philosophy  and  Christianity.  The 
reason  why  so  many  of  even  the  greatest  men 
are  not  complete  in  their  greatness  is  that  they 
lack  one  or  other  of  these  two  experiences. 
Goethe  was  a  great  man — indeed,  he  often  is 
instanced  as  the  complete  man;  but,  just  because 
he  never  was  converted  from  nature  to  grace, 
there  are  great  tracts  of  human  experience,  and 


THE  CLAIM  OF  HUMANISM    203 

these  the  highest  and  deepest  the  soul  of  man 
has  known,  which  he  neither  represents  nor 
indeed  could  appreciate.  Pascal  was  a  great 
man,  a  man  of  dominating  intellect  and  of 
eminent  soul;  but,  while  he  certainly  passed 
through  the  first  of  these  conversions,  it  was 
hardly  so  in  his  case  ?s  regards  the  second,  and 
his  Christianity — magnificently  conquering  as  it 
was  for  himself — would  have  been  more  con- 
vincing and  adequate  for  others  if  it  had  had 
more  unity  with  what  is  true  in  reason  and 
natural  in  life.  Is  not  the  sum  of  the  matter 
this?  God  has  given  man  two  great  gifts. 
One  is  life,  with  all  its  interest  and  sweetness 
and  worth.  The  other  is  His  'unspeakable 
gift,'  Jesus  Christ.  These  gifts  are  from  God. 
They  are  for  man.  Let  man  take  both  from 
Him.  There  is  the  complete  man.  That  and 
that  only  is  {Im  Ganzen  zu  leben.'  I  know 
there  is  danger  in  saying  this;  truth  and  love 
are  always  things  which  we  can  abuse  if  we 
will.  But  there  is  no  danger  if  we  take  life 
from  God  and  if  we  take  Christ  as  fully  as 
we  take  life. 


VI 
THE  VETO  OF  DEATH 


'The  Oriental  fable  of  the  traveller  surprised  in  the 
desert  by  a  wild  beast  is  very  old. 

'Seeking  to  save  himself  from  the  fierce  animal,  the 
traveller  jumps  into  a  well  with  no  water  in  it;  but  at 
the  bottom  of  this  well  he  sees  a  dragon  waiting  with 
open  mouth  to  devour  him.  And  the  unhappy  man,  not 
daring  to  go  out  lest  he  should  be  the  prey  of  the  beast, 
not  daring  to  jump  to  the  bottom  lest  he  should  be  de- 
voured by  the  dragon,  clings  to  the  branches  of  a  wild 
bush  which  grows  out  of  one  of  the  cracks  of  the  well. 
His  hands  weaken,  and  he  feels  that  he  must  soon  give 
way  to  certain  fate;  but  still  he  clings,  and  sees  two 
mice,  one  white,  the  other  black,  evenly  moving  round 
the  bush  to  which  he  hangs  and  gnawing  off  its  roots. 

'The  traveller  sees  this  and  knows  he  must  inevitably 
perish ;  but,  while  thus  hanging,  he  looks  about  him 
and  finds  on  the  leaves  of  the  bush  some  drops  of  honey. 
These  he  reaches  with  his  tongue  and  licks  them  off 
with  rapture. 

'Thus  I  hang  upon  the  boughs  of  life.' 

LEO   TOLSTOY. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  VETO  OF  DEATH 

The  chapter  just  concluded  dealt  with  the 
positive  of  human  life;  this  chapter  must  deal 
with  life's  great  and  final  negative.  The  theme 
may  be  less  attractive  than  the  other,  but  it  is 
inevitable.  No  philosophy  of  life  is  adequate 
or  even  honest  which  speaks  only  of  life's 
fruition  and  which  shuts  its  eyes  to  the  other 
side  of  it.  This  warm,  living  world,  with  its 
sweetness  and  interest,  is  true ;  but  true  also — 
a  simply  undeniable  fact  of  experience — is  the 
cold,  dead  grave  with  all  that  declines  thereto 
as  life  goes  on.  A  true  philosophy  must  look 
both  these  truths  full  in  the  face.  We  have 
been  looking  at  life;  we  must  now  look  at 
death.  It  is  not  morbid  to  do  this;  it  is  only 
truthful. 

But  if  this,  then,  be  an  inevitable  chapter  in 
any  frank  discussion  of  the  facts  of  experience, 
207 


208  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

it  may  and  should  be  not  an  involved  one.  The 
crucial  question  is  a  perfectly  plain  question 
which  awaits  a  simple  answer.  There  is  indeed 
something  not  merely  utterly  futile,  but  also 
palpably  false,  in  multiplying  words  about 
death.  The  act  of  death  is  nature's  almost 
simplest  deed.  When  the  human  mind  sets 
itself  to  express  what  death  is,  it  strains  itself 
almost  to  exhaustion.  In  literature,  Newman's 
Dream  of  Gerontius  makes  it  a  most  elaborate 
business.  But  we  do  not  take  so  long  to  die 
as  that.  In  music,  Strauss's  Tod  und  Verkl'd- 
ritng  builds  up  and  up  and  up  a  stupendous 
structure  of  sound  to  utter  the  tremendous  word 
of  dissolution.  But  this  tremendous  word, 
nature  utters  every  hour  without  even  raising 
her  breath.  Even  when  a  great  man  dies, 
is  it  so.  Here  is  the  record  from  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's biography: — 

'On  the  early  morning  of  the  19th,  his  family  all 
kneeling  round  the  bed  on  which  he  lay  in  the 
stupor  of  coming  death,  without  a  struggle  he 
ceased  to  breathe.  Nature  without — wood  and 
wide  lawn  and  far-off  sky — shone  at  her  fairest.'1 

1  Morley's  Life  of  Gladstone,  iii.  528. 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         209 

When  one  thinks  of  all  the  elements — intellec- 
tual, moral,  spiritual — that  combined  to  make 
a  personality  such  as  Gladstone's,  is  there  not 
something  silencing  in  the  almost  triviality  of 
that  negative  which  ends  it  all  and  the  casual- 
ness  of  it  in  the  order  of  things? 

'Hi  motus  animorum  atque  haec  certamina  tanta 
pulveris  exigui  iactu   compressa  quiescent.' x 

High-sounding  words,  then,  are  in  this  chap- 
ter out  of  place.  Fine  writing  would  be  a  trans- 
parent folly.  Sometimes  an  inflated  orator 
thinks  death  a  grand  theme  for  the  exercise  of 
his  powers;  but  there  is  in  that  last  silence  what 
makes  him  seem  to  be  speaking  in  a  dumb 
show.  What  does  it  avail  what  eloquent  per- 
sons say  about  death?  Has  any  one  anything 
to  say  to  it?  Who  will  answer  it?  Who  or 
what  will  take  from  it  the  right  of  having  the 
last  word?  This  is  the  one  thing  that  matters, 
and,  if  it  can  be  met  at  all,  it  can  be  met  with 
plain   and   few  words. 

1  Virgil's  Georgics,  iv.  86-7.  ('These  tempests  of  the  soul, 
these  Titanic  struggles,  are  quelled  and  laid  to  rest  by  a  little 
handful  of  scattered  dust.') 


210  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

Something,  however,  seems  called  for  on  the 
prior  point  of  whether  and  how  far  this  veto, 
or  apparent  veto,  of  death  is  a  challenge  to 
faith  which  presses  on  the  mind — even  the 
earnest  and  Christian  mind — of  to-day.  Is  it 
not  the  case  that  men's  thoughts,  even  within 
the  areas  of  belief,  are  hardly  at  all  occupied 
with  any  question  of  what  is  beyond  death,  but 
are  engrossed — one  may  say  exclusively — with 
questions  of  the  life  that  now  is  and  how  this 
is  to  be  elevated  and  saved?  Indeed,  is  not 
this  intent  interest  in  the  bettering  of  this 
present  world  felt  as  really  a  higher  and  nobler 
aim  than  the  concern  about  personal  immor- 
tality? That  the  modern  mind,  even  within 
the  Church,  is  bent  as  these  queries  suggest,  is 
plain;  and  it  may  therefore  seem  that  the  con- 
sequence is  that  the  question  of  this  chapter 
is  not  so  inevitable  as  has  been  said,  but  has 
indeed  even  lost  much  of  its  interest  in  face 
of  more  immediate  and  practical  interests  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth.  This  is  a  tend- 
ency which  deserves  a  few  moments'  examina- 
tion. 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         211 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  to  be  said  that  in  the 
modern  engrossment  of  heart  and  mind  with 
this  world  there  is  much  that  is  true  and  even 
noble,  and  it  is  a  deserved  rebuke  to  any  spuri- 
ous and  selfish  'other-worldliness'  which  cared 
only  about  its  own  soul's  future.  Of  course 
this  engrossment  may  most  easily  serve  a  sheer, 
shallow  worldliness — an  absorption  of  body, 
mind,  and  soul  with  ephemeral  pleasure  or 
gain,  which  leaves  neither  the  desire  nor  the 
capacity  to  think  seriously  of  life's  real  issues 
and  final  destinies.  Of  this,  I  do  not  speak 
here.  But,  on  its  better  side,  this  modern 
tendency  of  thought  is  often  a  noble  engross- 
ment with  this  world — a  desire  to  make  re- 
ligion practical  and  a  devotion  to  the  service 
of  humanity.  Perhaps  never  than  in  our  age 
were  such  desire  and  devotion  stronger  in  many 
hearts.  That  this  spirit  should  feel  so  keenly 
how  much  there  is  in  the  conditions  of  human 
life  in  this  world  which  demands  the  attention 
of  conscience  and  mind  and  heart  and  life,  as 
to  make  it  disregard  any  thought  of  another 
life  is  not  unintelligible,  and  is  something  which 


212  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

even  religion  has  not  always  the  right  to  cen- 
sure. Yet,  intelligible  and,  in  some  sense,  even 
pardonable  as  this  point  of  view  is  before  the 
calls  and  claims  of  the  world  around  us,  I  ven- 
ture to  suggest  there  lies  in  this  tendency  a 
grave  danger  even  to  this  very  passion  to  pro- 
mote the  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth.  Let  me 
try  to  show  how  this  is  so. 

The  social  redemption  of  humanity  in  this 
world  is  a  mighty  task.  It  is  a  task  which  will 
never  be  accomplished  without  immense  energy 
and  devoted  service  from  man  for  man.  This 
energy  and  service  will  not  be  given  except 
under  the  constraining  power  of  a  profound 
and  permanent  motive  adequate  for  these  ends. 
And  what  I  want  to  suggest  is  that  one  of  the 
deepest  and  even  indispensable  elements  in  a 
motive  adequate  for  the  energy  and  service 
necessary  for  the  redemption  of  humanity  is 
this — the  sense  of  the  infinite  value  of  man. 
This,  and  not  less  than  this,  is  why  humanity 
is  worth  saving,  should  be  saved,  must  be  saved 
at  any  cost.  Motives  less  than  this — human- 
ism, kindness,  altruism — will  do  a  good  deal 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         213 

for  humanity;  but  they  will  not  do  everything. 
Those  impulses  will  begin  plans  for  humanity's 
betterment;  but — this,  I  think,  is  often  to  be 
observed  in  life — they  somehow  rarely  have  in 
them  to  carry  their  service  out  even  to  the  end. 
Now,  I  do  not  assert  that  there  will  be  found 
this  constraining  conviction  of  the  infinite  value 
of  man  only  along  with  the  conscious  belief  in 
personal  immortality.  But  that  where  there  is 
a  consert  to  forego  or  ignore  the  latter,  the 
former  will  retain  its  force  is  impossible.  This 
is  not  the  forecast  of  prejudiced  orthodoxy: 
it  is  not  denied  by  the  most  serious  negative 
thought.  The  distinguished  author  of  Ecce 
Homo  puts  it  undisguisedly  in  these  words : — 

'The  more  our  thoughts  widen  and  deepen  as  the 
universe  grows  upon  us,  and  we  become  accustomed 
to  boundless  space  and  time,  the  more  petrifying  is 
the  contrast  of  our  own  insignificance,  the  more 
contemptible  becomes  the  pettiness,  shortness,  fra- 
gility of  the  individual  life.  A  moral  paralysis 
creeps  upon  us.  In  a  while  we  comfort  ourselves 
with  the  notion  of  self-sacrifice;  we  say,  What 
matter  if  I  pass,  let  me  think  of  others.  But  the 
other  has  become  contemptible  in  less  than  the  self: 


2i4  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

all  human  griefs  alike  seem  little  worth  assuaging, 
human  happiness  too  paltry  at  the  best  to  be  worth 
increasing.' 1 

These  are  sombre  words.  I  do  not  wish  to 
overstrain  them  or  press  the  argument  too  far. 
I  believe  much  service  of  man  will  always  re- 
main despite  any  loss  of  faith  in  immortality. 
But  the  service  which  will  give  and  save  to  the 
uttermost  because  it  is  serving  and  saving 
something  of  infinite  value  will  hardly  remain. 
And  after  all,  this  world  will  only  be  redeemed 
by  men  who  believe — believe  in  man  if  not  in 
God.  It  will  only  be  redeemed  by  those  who 
are  convinced  man  is  worth  saving,  because 
there  is  about  even  the  humblest  and  about 
even  the  worst  something  which  outweighs  and 
eternally  will  outweigh  any  sacrifice  made  on 
his  behalf.  I  do  not  identify  this  conviction 
with  a  positive  faith  in  personal  immortality, 
but  I  believe  that  experience,  alike  in  the  his- 
tory of  peoples  and  in  individual  life,  witnesses 
to  their  vital  interrelation. 

One    other    remark   may   be   made    on    the 

1  Seeley's  Natural  Religion,  p.  251. 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         215 

modern  tendency  to  ignore  or  minimise  the 
importance  of  this  question.  It  is  notably 
ignored  in  much  of  modern  literature  even  of 
the  more  serious  kind,  and  in  philosophy  we 
find  a  writer  of  such  a  non-materialistic  temper 
as  the  late  Professor  James  admitting,  in  the 
act  of  writing  upon  immortality,  that  his  feel- 
ing about  it  has  never  been  of  the  keenest 
order,'  and  that  it  is  'a  secondary  point.'1 
Even  in  the  religious  teaching  of  to-day  little 
is  said  of  any  other  world  but  this.  In  a  sense, 
such  reticence  is  not  altogether  a  loss,  for  this 
great  theme  should  not  be  the  subject  of  facile 
talk,  and  that  it  should  become  a  topic  for  the 
'popular  preacher'  would  be  a  kind  of  pro- 
fanity. Yet,  despite  all  this  avoidance  of  the 
question,  I  wonder  if  it  really  is  ignored  in 
men's  and  women's  hearts.  I  do  not  believe 
it  is.  The  pressure  and  poignancy  of  such  a 
question  as  this  are  not  a  matter  merely  of 
the  literary  or  philosophical  or  homiletical 
mood  of  the  day.     It  rests  on  something  far 

1  Human  Immortality   (Ingersole  Lecture),  p.  n;  Varieties 
of  Religious  Experience,  p.  524. 

15 


216  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

deeper  and  more  permanent  than  that.  In 
lines  which  I  think  in  a  previous  chapter  I  said 
are  too  familiar  for  quotation,  but  which  I 
quote  here  as  they  are  so  obviously  apt,  Brown- 
ing has  said, 

'Just  when  we  're  safest,  there  's  a  sunset  touch, 
A  fancy  from  a  flower-bell,  some  one's  death, 
A  chorus-ending  from  Euripides — 
And  that  's  enough  for  fifty  hopes  and  fears.' x 

This — whether  thus  or  otherwise  expressed — 
is  permanently  true  in  human  nature.  To  shut 
down  this  great  question  is  to  gag  something 
in  the  human  heart  itself.  And  especially  is 
this  true  of  the  heart  which  really  knows  what 
it  is  to  love.  It  is  impossible  to  love  without 
thinking  about  death  and  what  may  be  after. 
I  am  persuaded  that  here  more  than  anywhere 
else  does  the  whole  question  of  immortality 
begin  with  many  people  to  be  a  real  question. 
What  first  awakens  their  minds  to  it  is  not 
some  principle  of  philosophy  or  tenet  of  re- 
ligion: it  is  not  any  inability  to  conceive  our 

1  Bishop  Blotvgram's  dpology, 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         217 

•wn  extinction,  nor  is  it  a  fear  of  future  judg- 
ment. Very  often  it  is  first  awakened  when 
they  look  on  the  face  of  their  dear  ones — 
either  in  life  and  realise  how  it  is  fleeting,  or 
in  death  and  protest  against  it  that  their  love 
and  fellowship  are  over  for  ever.  This  is  as 
old  as  Plato:  'Many  a  man,'  he  says  (or  Soc- 
rates says) ,  'has  been  willing  to  go  to  the  world 
below  animated  by  the  hope  of  seeing  there  an 
earthly  love  or  wife  or  son,  and  conversing 
with  them.'1  It  is  as  new  as  the  father's  heart 
or  the  lover's  or  the  widow's  to-day.  Under 
this  compulsion  were  the  two  great  English 
poets  of  the  later  Victorian  age  called  to  face 
the  question — Tennyson  in  In  Memoriam, 
written  after  Arthur  Hallam's  death,  and 
Browning  in  La  Saisiaz,  evoked  by  the  sudden 
summoning  of  his  'companion  dear  and  true,' 
just  as  she  'talked  and  laughed.'  Love  cannot 
bury  this  problem.  An  old  song  has  the  title, 
'True  till  death.'  Only  till  death?  It  is  such 
a  little  while  for  love !     For  this  reason  count- 

1  Phaedo,  68.     It  is  indeed  as  old  as  Homer;   Iliad,  xxii. 
586  et  sqq. 


218  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

less  hearts  are  not  ignoring  the  great  idea  of 
immortality. 

But,  however  it  may  or  may  not  be  with 
regard  to  human  nature  in  connection  with  an 
indifference  to  this  topic — on  which  we  cannot 
longer  stay  to  say  more — surely  Christian  faith, 
whenever  it  realises  itself,  cannot  be  indifferent 
to  it,  but  must  feel  in  death  a  direct  and  un- 
avoidable challenge.  A  single  witness  may  suf- 
fice to  show  this.  So  strongly  does  St.  Paul 
feel  the  challenge  of  death,  that  he  actually 
declares  that,  without  immortality,  Christianity 
would  be  less  a  gospel  than  a  misfortune,  and 
that  Christians  would  be  'of  all  men  most  to 
be  pitied.'1  This  may  seem  an  extreme  saying, 
for  surely,  whatever  the  future  may  have  or 
may  not  have,  it  is  better  to  be  a  good  man 
here  than  a  bad,  and  live  a  Christian  life  than 
not.  To  which,  I  think,  the  great  Apostle 
would  answer  somewhat  in  this  wise.  Better 
to  be  a  good  man  than  a  bad  even  here — cer- 
tainly; that  is  a  matter  merely  of  morality,  and 
morality  is  always  its  own  sufficient  justifica- 

1  I  Corinthians  xv.  19. 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         219 

tion.  But  do  you  mean  only  a  morality  when 
you  speak  of  Christianity  and  even  of  a  Chris- 
tian life?  To  be  a  Christian  is  something  a 
great  deal  more  than  to  be  a  man  who  tries  to 
be  good  even  according  to  the  Christian  ethical 
standard.  To  be  a  Christian  is  also — and  in- 
deed first,  for  the  ethical  follows  from  this — 
that  you  can,  through  Christ,  know  and  love 
your  Father  in  heaven,  and  that  He,  in  Christ, 
gives  His  love  to  you  and  bids  you  call  Him 
'Father,'  and  promises  to  take  up  your  life, 
even  its  sorrows  and  sins,  and  save  you.  Now 
all  this  is  something  far  deeper,  vaster,  more 
than  can  be  realised  within  the  brief  terms  of 
a  mortal  life.  Here  it  is  but  begun,  as  well  as 
continually  impeded.  If  then — so  the  apostle 
would  conclude — all  this  is  cut  off  by  death 
after  a  few  hampered  years,  that  would  leave 
the  Christian  indeed  more  pitiable  than  the 
pagan  who  had  cherished  no  such  passionate 
hope  and  therefore  meets  no  such  bitter  defeat. 
I  have  put  the  above  into  St.  Paul's  lips  less 
because  it  is  his  argument  than  because  I  do 
not  dare  to  call  myself  a  Christian  in  a  sense 


220  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

spiritual  enough  to  appreciate  it  at  its  fullness; 
but  if  we  were  really  Christians — persons  to 
whom  to  love  and  be  loved  by  God  in  Christ 
is  a  passion  and  a  possession — we  should  ap- 
preciate it  and  should  feel  that  a  gospel  in- 
different about  immortality  was  a  kind  of  out- 
rage. That  God  shall  call  us  'friends' — and 
leave  His  friends  to  die ! 

And  yet  how  dim  it  all  seems!  The  Greek 
tragedian's  words  sound  sometimes  more  real 
than  the  apostle's: 

'But  if  any  far-off  state  there  be 
Dearer  than  life  to  mortality, 
The  hand  of  the  Dark  hath  hold  thereof, 
And  mist  is  under  and  mist  above ; 
And  so  we  are  sick  for  life,  and  cling 
On  earth  to  this  nameless  and  shining  thing; 
The  other  life  is  a  fountain  sealed 
And  the  deeps  below  us  are  unrevealed, 
And  we  drift  on  legends  for  ever.'1 

'Legends !'  Well,  at  least,  we  can  deliver 
ourselves  from  that.  Let  us  try  to  face  the 
facts  about  death  whatever  they  be. 

1  Euripides,  Uyppolitus,  i.  189-97   (Gilbert  Murray's  trans- 
lation). 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         221 

When,  then,  we  turn  to  do  this,  we  see  at 
once  the  palpable  and  hideous  fact  of  dissolu- 
tion, and  our  minds  are  met  with  the  plain 
assertion — so  often  maintained  to  be  an  em- 
pirical truth  of  science — that  indisputably  and 
indeed  obviously,  when  the  material  organism 
of  the  body  is  dissolved,  conscious  life,  which 
is  a  function  or  at  least  a  concomitant  of  or- 
ganic structure,  must  cease.  If  this  be  fact, 
cadit  quaestio.  Whether  or  not  it  be  fact  de- 
pends upon  a  single  and  simple  issue — the  issue 
namely  whether  the  conscious  life  of  man  is  so 
related  to  the  perishable  physical  organism 
that,  if  the  latter  be  destroyed,  the  former 
must  thereupon  cease  to  be.  This  is  a  question 
which  we  must  meet  before  we  have  the  right 
to  go  further. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  answer  to  this  question 
depends  on  the  kind  of  relation  existing  be- 
tween body  and  spirit,  brain  and  mind.1  That 
there  is  a  relationship  between  the  two  elements 
is   indisputable,   and   it  is,   moreover,   marvel- 

1  The  substance  of  the  argument  of  this  paragraph  is  more 
fully  developed  in  James's  Human  Immortality. 


222  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

lously  subtle  and  Intricate — so  much  so  that  a 
physical  movement  is  associated  with  every 
mental  one.  But  things  may  be  related  to  each 
other  in  more  ways  than  one.  Thus  steam  is 
related  to  a  locomotive  engine.  It  is  so  related 
to  it  that  if  you  destroy  the  engine,  there  is  an 
end  to  the  steam.  Why?  Because  the  rela- 
tionship here  is  a  causal  one — the  engine  causes 
the  steam  to  be  produced.  But  take,  say,  a  ray 
of  light  in  a  prism.  The  refraction  and  colori- 
sation  of  the  ray  of  light  are  in  manifest  re- 
lation to  the  prism,  and  any  movement  of  the 
latter  is  accompanied  by  a  movement  in  the 
former.  But  if  you  destroy  the  prism  you  do 
not  extinguish  the  light.  Why  not?  Because 
the  relationship  here  is  not  that  of  a  cause — 
the  prism  does  not  cause  the  light  to  come  into 
existence — but  is  rather  that  of  a  medium  of 
one  form  of  its  manifestation.  Well,  then, 
the  whole  question  of  the  possibility  of  the 
continuance  of  conscious  life  after  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  body  is  simply  this — is  the  relation- 
ship of  matter  to  spirit  that  of  a  cause  as  an 
engine's  is  to  steam,  or  that  of  a  medium  as  a 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         223 

prism's  is  to  light?  Now,  the  moment  it  is 
perceived  that  this  is  the  true  statement  of  the 
question,  then  it  is  also  clear  that  no  science 
has  any  mandate  from  known  physical  facts 
to  declare  immortality  impossible.  For  no 
science  has  even  the  slightest  inkling  of  how 
matter  and  spirit  are  related.  Why  and  how 
a  movement  of  the  molecules  of  the  brain 
should  accompany  consciousness  (or  vice  versa) 
is  a  thing  of  which  no  kind  of  explanation  is 
available  or  even  imaginable.  The  nexus  is — 
to  use  Tyndall's  oft-quoted  word  for  it — 'un- 
thinkable.' How  then  can  you  dogmatically 
assert  that  it  is  a  causal  nexus?  But  unless  it 
be  shown  to  be  a  causal  nexus,  unless  it  be 
shown  not  to  be  such  a  connection  as,  for  ex- 
ample, that  of  a  prism  to  light — supplying  the 
medium  for  one  form  of  its  manifestation — 
then  to  proscribe  the  possibility  of  immortality 
is  to  exceed  any  warrant  from  scientific  facts. 
In  contrast  therefore  to  the  unjustified  dog- 
matism of  writers  such  as  Haeckel  on  this  sub- 
ject, I  shall  quote  one  of  the  justest  and  sanest 
unbelievers   since    David   Hume.      'There   is,' 


224  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

says  John  Stuart  Mill,  'no  evidence  in  science 
against  the  immortality  of  the  soul  but  that 
negative  evidence  which  consists  in  the  absence 
of  evidence  in  its  favour.'1  Science,  then,  has 
the  right  to  be  altogether  agnostic  on  the  ques- 
tion, even  utterly  sceptical,  for  there  is  nothing 
in  the  realm  of  physical  science  which  suggests 
an  answer  in  the  affirmative.  But  there  is  cer- 
tainly nothing  to  authorise  a  dogmatic  decision 
in  the  negative. 

This  then  clears  the  way  for  us  to  look  at 
another  aspect  of  man's  being  than  the  physical. 
For  there  are  two  aspects  under  which  man's 
nature  may  be  contemplated,  and  if  one — the 
physical — suggests  the  limitation  of  finite  and 
temporal  existence,  the  other — the  spiritual — 
certainly  suggests  what  transcends  it.  Take 
the  two  things  in  the  life  of  a  human  being 
which  essentially  differentiate  it  from  the  life  of 
any  other  creature  in  the  animal  world.  These 
are  reason  and  morality.  Both  of  these  things 
are  of  more  than  sense  and  time.  The  rational 
life  is.     The  intelligence  that  knows  things  in 

1  Three  Essays  on  Religion:  Theism,  pt.  iii. 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         225 

time  is  not  and  cannot  be  itself  merely  of  time, 
and  indeed  there  could  not  be  for  us  such  a 
conception  as  that  of  time  unless  we,  who  con- 
ceive it,  stood  above  it.  The  moral  life  is. 
The  conscience  neither  seeks  its  authority  from 
the  things  of  this  world  nor  binds  itself  to 
justify  its  laws  by  them.  Moreover,  the  aims 
which  these  rational  and  moral  principles  of 
his  being  set  before  man  are  aims  which  he 
knows  are  quite  out  of  his  reach  of  attainment 
within  this  finite  life;  the  task  of  reason,  which 
is  to  know  the  truth,  and  the  task  of  morality, 
which  is  to  realise  the  ethical  ideal,  are  alike 
incumbent  upon  us  as  men  and  impossible  for 
us  as  mortals.  This,  then,  is  man  in  his  spiritual 
aspect — a  being  who,  if  he  will  live  the  life 
which  essentially  and  distinctively  is  man's,  must 
use  categories  of  thought  and  obey  principles 
of  conduct  which  have  alike  their  source  and 
their  satisfaction  beyond  the  'bourne  of  Time 
and  Place.'  In  a  word,  man  is  a  being  who, 
whether  or  not  he  actually  is  immortal,  is  called 
on  to  live  as  if  he  were. 

It  is  when  we  consider  this  essentially  eternal 


226  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

element  in  human  nature  that  we  find  that  man 
is  a  being  at  least  fit  for  more  than  this  little 
span  of  life.  As  Dr.  Martineau  has  said,  'were 
it  the  will  of  the  Creator  to  change  His  arrange- 
ment for  mankind,  and  to  determine  that  they 
should  henceforth  live  in  this  world  ten  or  a 
hundred  times  as  long  as  they  do  at  present, 
no  one  would  feel  that  new  souls  would  be  re- 
quired for  the  execution  of  the  design.'1  Con- 
sider what  this  means.  This  soul  of  man — 
domiciled  in  time,  but  bid  to  live  and  fit  to  live 
for  a  reason  and  a  morality  which  are  of  more 
than  time — is  the  supreme  achievement  of  the 
whole  process  of  nature.  By  a  development, 
slow,  stupendous,  often  terrible,  evolution  has 
worked  unhastingly,  unrestingly  towards  this 
supreme  achievement,  man,  the  law  of  whose 
being  is  that  he  does  not  only  live  for  the  de- 
mands of  the  finite — such  as  eating  and  drink- 
ing, self-defence,  propagation  of  species,  and 
so  on — but  also  and  above  all  by  principles  and 
for  ends  that  are  eternal.  Now  'God  and 
nature,'   said  Aristotle,    'do   nothing  in  vain.' 

1  Martineau's  Endeavours  after  the  Christian  Life,  p.  126. 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         227 

That  the  whole  process  of  life  is  rational,  all 
science  as  well  as  all  faith  must  hold  as  its  first 
hypothesis.  Is  it,  then,  rational  to  evolve  a 
being  which  is  eternal  in  principle  and  yet 
doomed  in  fact  to  what  is  temporal?  Is  it  rea- 
sonable to  demand  of  man  that  he  live  as  if 
he  were  immortal  when,  in  reality,  he  is  not? 
Such  questions  involve  far  more  than  any  mere 
desire  on  our  part  for  another  life.  It  is  not 
that  we  desire  it:  rather  is  it  that  nature  re- 
quires it  if  her  work  is  not  to  be  in  vain.  It 
is  an  argument  from  the  rationality  of  things, 
and  the  reason  which  is  in  all  the  work  of 
nature.  'And  thus,'  says  a  well-known  writer 
on  evolution,  'I  believe  in  the  immortality  of 
the  soul  not  in  the  sense  in  which  I  accept 
demonstrable  truths  of  science,  but  as  a  su- 
preme act  of  faith  in  the  reasonableness  of 
God's  work.'1 

This  is  the  highest  argument  for  human  im- 
mortality, which  can  be  adduced  by  reason 
looking  at  the  question,  as  it  were,  from  be- 
low upwards.     We  feel  it  most  not  when  we 

1  Fiske's  Destiny  of  Man,  p.  6z. 


228  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

think  of  it  abstractly  as  true  of  'man,'  but  when 
we  consider  the  passing  of  some  great  soul. 
It  is  this  which  gives  its  perennial  impressive- 
ness  to  the  incomparable  scenes  of  the  Phaedo, 
the  great  argument  of  which  after  all  is  not 
any  of  Plato's  speculations  about  the  soul's 
connection  with  eternal  'ideas,'  but  is  Socrates 
himself.  In  modern  literature,  Browning's 
confident  convictions  and  Tennyson's  more 
wistful  and  yet  unquenchable  faith  have  the 
same  basis.  We  all  feel  it.  We  all  feel  the 
irony  of  the  contrast  between  the  body's  decay 
and  dissolution  into  nothingness,  and  the 
growth  and  maturity  of  the  soul  and  character 
within.  Physical  life  is  a  peau  de  chagrin — 
to  use  the  figure  of  Balzac's  famous  tale — 
which  shrinks  and  becomes  smaller  and  finally 
vanishes;  but  moral  life  is  not  a  peau  de  cha- 
grin, and  it  is  at  its  greatest  often  when  the 
other  ends.  There  is  an  irony  here  which  is 
even  an  irrationality,  and  it  makes  a  strong 
plea  in  moral  reason  for  immortality. 

And  yet,  when  all  is  said,  can  our  faith  really 
stand  on  this  in  face  of  the  great  world?    For 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         229 

myself,  I  find  it  hard  to  think  so.  When  we 
bring  this  out  from  the  chamber  of  the  mind, 
where  it  sounds  full  and  strong,  and  repeat  it 
in  the  vast  halls  of  the  universe,  it  seems  to 
fall  faint  and  flat  upon  the  ear.  Now,  by  this, 
I  most  distinctly  do  not  mean  that  this  or  any 
other  great  spiritual  conviction  of  the  soul  is 
to  be  bullied  into  timorous  silence  by  the  mere 
dead  immensities  of  time  and  space.  After  all, 
man,  as  Pascal  says,  n'est  qu'un  roseau,  le  plus 
faible  de  la  nature  mats  c'  est  un  roseau  pen- 
sant.1  After  all,  mind  will  be  found  to  be  more 
than  matter  in  the  day  of  judgment.  I  abhor 
the  materialism  which  would  terrorise  faith 
with  vulgar  immensities  of  matter.  It  is  not 
the  dead  immensities  before  which  this  thought 
of  immortality  dwindles.  It  is  the  vastness  of 
the  reason  of  the  universe.  You  tell  me  to 
believe  in  my  personal  continuance  after  death 
as  an  act  of  faith  in  the  reason  in  nature's 
work.  But  what  a  large  word  that  is !  We 
see  the  fringes  of  it  in  the  story  of  the  evolu- 
tion of  man,  of  species,  of  worlds.    Surely  there 

1  Pensees,  II.  x. 


230  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

may  well  be  a  reason  for  and  in  all  that,  and 
yet  that  reason  hardly  needs  my  eternal  con- 
scious existence  for  its  justification.  Surely  it 
is  conceivable  that  the  universe  is  rational  even 
though 

'Many  a  hearth  upon  our  dark  globe  sighs  after 
many  a  vanished  face, 

Many  a  planet  by  many  a  sun  may  roll  with 

the    dust   of   a   vanished    race.'1 

Again  let  me  make  clear  that  it  is  not  the  mere 
immensity  of  the  universe  I  am  speaking  of, 
but  the  immensity  of  the  plan — the  reason — of 
the  universe.  That  world-reason  evolved  me 
and  uses  me,  but  not  therefore  does  it  need  me 
eternally.  It  may  use  me,  and  be  done  with 
me,  and  pass  on  to  wider  ends.  That  were 
entirely  rational;  and,  as  we  look  at  the  facts 

1  Tennyson's  Fastness,  I.  Having  named  both  Tennyson 
and  Browning  on  this  subject,  I  may  observe  that  the  latter 
looks  at  the  problem  of  immortality  only  in  view  of  the  indi- 
vidual, but  the  former  feels  the  pressure  upon  it  of  the  sense 
of  the  universe.  For  this  reason  Browning  is  the  more  as- 
sertive, and  one  might  almost  say  'cock-sure' ;  while  Tennyson 
has  another  note  in  his  faith,  and  one  which  is  really  deeper. 
Browning  says  things  about  immortality  more  strikingly  than 
Tennyson  ever  does;  but  I  am  not  sure  but  that  the  latter 
saw  more  about  it. 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         231 

of  life,  is  it  not  almost  palpably  the  case?  For 
if  it  be  replied  that  this  means  the  waste  of 
what,  after  all,  is  the  greatest  thing — personal 
spirit  and  character — I  admit  it.  But  is  not 
this  waste  just  one  of  the  most  appalling  yet 
undeniable  things  in  life?  In  an  earlier  chap- 
ter I  mentioned  this  as  one  of  the  leading  im- 
pressions which  Shakespere's  view  of  existence 
shows  us;  but  the  thoughtful  mind  does  not 
need  to  go  to  Shakespere  to  feel  it,  for  it  is 
apparent  every  day,  whatever  may  be  said  of 
it,  that  the  order  of  this  world  is  consistent 
with  constant  waste  of  resources  and  frustra- 
tion of  capacity.  There  are  arrested  organisms 
everywhere,  and  indeed  their  very  failure  is  the 
contribution  they  pay  to  nature's  evolution  to 
her  further  ends.  In  face  of  all  this — all  this 
sense  of  the  universe  and  these  facts  of  life — 
can  we  really  lean  our  faith  in  personal  immor- 
tality upon  its  necessity  in  the  rationality  of  the 
cosmic  order,  or  even  what,  speaking  more  re- 
ligiously, we  call  'the  reasonableness  of  God's 
work'?  I  cannot  find  that  anchor  hold  when 
one  gets  out  to  deeper  waters  and  feels  the 


232  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

surges  of  the  mighty  seas.  And  yet,  as  Plato 
said  long  ago — all  the  fundamental  and  needful 
things  about  this  question  were  said  long  ago — 
this  is  'the  best  and  most  irrefragable  of  human 
theories,'  and  'the  raft  upon  which  man  sails 
through  life,  not  without  risk,  as  I  admit,  if  he 
cannot  find  some  word  of  God  which  will  more 
surely  and  safely  carry  him.'1 

What  more  then  is  to  be  said?  Whither 
shall  we  turn  our  minds  for  that  'word'  which 
may  'more  surely  and  safely  carry'  us?  Well, 
here  we  find  ourselves  once  more  in  the  position 
we  reached  in  more  than  one  of  our  previous 
discussions.  In  discussing,  for  example,  pain, 
we  found  that  many  things  were  to  be  said 
about  it  which  did  cast  a  measure  of  illumina- 
tion upon  it  for  faith;  but  that  in  the  end,  and 
when  there  was  no  more  to  be  said  about  it, 
we  saw  that  a  complete  faith  could  be  reached 
only  if  we  could  say  something  more,  not  about 
pain,  but  about  God.  It  is  so  in  this  question 
also.  We  have  been  saying  things  about  man 
— about,  especially,  that  element  in  man  which 

1Phaedo,  85. 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH 


^33 


is  of  more  than  time — and  this  does  at  least 
suggest  the  immortal  hope ;  but  in  the  end  what 
we  must  again  seek  is  not  so  much  something 
more  about  man  as  something  more  about  God. 
What  this  is  it  is  not  difficult  to  say.  For  what 
is  it  which  is  inadequate  for  the  assurance  of 
faith  in  our  personal  immortality  when  we 
speak,  as  we  have  been  doing,  of  the  reason 
of  God's  work?  It  is  just  that,  as  has  been 
indicated,  this  universal  reason  is  a  vast  and 
general  purpose  to  which  I  am  not — at  least 
necessarily — of  personal  and  permanent  value. 
What  is  lacking  is  the  thought  of  God  as  not 
merely  Reason  related  to  some  ultimate  pur- 
pose 'to  which  the  whole  creation  moves,'  but 
as  a  Father  related  in  eternal  love  and  care 
to  us  His  children — One  who  cares  for  us  far 
too  deeply  and  individually  to  lose  hold  of  us 
in  the  darkness  of  the  night.  It  is  thus  just 
the  thought  of  God  which  is  brought  to  us  in 
the  experience  of  religion,  and  is  made  sure 
to  us  in  Jesus  Christ. 

This  is  the  one   firm  basis  for   a   faith   in 
immortality.     It  is  not  an  argument  from  a 


234  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

philosophy  of  human  nature,  but  an  implicate 
in  the  religion  which  knows  God  as  our  Father. 
It  is  upon  this  experience  of  God,  and  not 
simply  upon  an  analysis  of  the  soul,  that  those 
great  saints  of  past  ages  have  taken  their  stand, 
who  have  been  able  to  pass  from  the  wistful- 
ness  of  hope  on  this  matter  to  the  certitude  of 
faith.  Here  lies  the  quite  unmistakable  differ- 
ence between  the  reasonings,  even  at  their  high- 
water  mark,  of  the  Phaedo,  and  the  amazing 
sureness  of  the  supreme  utterances  about  im- 
mortality in  the  Book  of  Job  or  in  the  Psalms. 
What  made  Job  say,  'I  know  that  .  .  .  after 
my  frame  is  destroyed  ...  I  shall,  even  dis- 
embodied, see  God'?1  What  made  the  writer 
of  the  seventy-third  Psalm  write  so  calmly, 
'Thou  shalt  afterwards  take  me  to  glory'?2  It 
was  not  that  these  men  were  philosophers.  It 
was  not  that  they  knew  a  great  deal  about  the 
soul  of  man.  It  was  that  they  knew  that  God 
was  their  own  God — their  Friend  who  had 
made  Himself  known  to  them — and  they  were 
safer  in  His  hands  than  any  child  is  in  the 

1  Job  xix.  25,  26.  2  Psalm  lxxiii,  24. 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH 


235 


hands  of  its  father.  I  shall  express  this  further 
— for  it  is  important  though  it  is  simple — in 
the  words  of  a  great  Old  Testament  scholar : — 

'This  was  the  anchor  of  the  Old  Testament 
saints.  They  knew  God,  they  had  found  Him. 
In  His  grace  He  had  come  near  to  them,  and  re- 
moved their  transgressions  from  them.  They  had 
His  fellowship.  They  walked  with  Him.  They 
were  His  friends.  They  were  even  His  children. 
He  loved  them — and  He  was  life  and  He  gave 
them  life — and  they  felt  it  to  be  impossible  that 
He  should  cease  to  love  them,  and  therefore  im- 
possible that  He  could  let  them  die.  Here  was 
then  hope  of  eternal  life — to  know  God.  He 
could  not  break  this  tie  of  love  between  Him  and 
them,  for  He  loveth  with  an  everlasting  love.  He 
could  not  let  them  ever  go  from  His  heart  any 
more  than  a  father  could  let  go  his  child.  "Can 
a  woman  forget  her  sucking  child  that  she  should 
not  have  compassion  on  the  son  of  her  womb? 
Yet  these  may  forget,  yet  will  not  I  forget  thee."  '* 

Here,  I  say  again,  is  the  real  and  sure  basis 
of  a  faith  in  personal  immortality.  That  God 
loves  me  has  as  its  corollary  that  I  shall  not 
die  in  the  dust.     If  the  fellowship  with  God 

1  A.  B.  Davidson's  Waiting  upon  God,  p.  102. 


236  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

into  which  we  are  called  through  the  gospel 
which  is  in  Jesus  Christ  be  true  and  real,  then 
God  pledges  His  love  to  us  in  a  way  which 
means  more  than  a  few  years  here  can  fulfil. 
There  is  thus  no  such  thing  as  an  argument  for 
immortality  in  the  sense  of  some  logical  propo- 
sition of  physical  fact  which  proves  it.  The 
argument  for  immortality  is  just  the  gospel. 

It  might  seem  that  one  may  stop  here,  and, 
indeed,  that  to  seek  more  is  to  seek  lower.  The 
late  Dr.  Edward  Caird,  Master  of  Balliol, 
often  insisted  on  this.  To  him  'the  spiritual 
life  is  or  ought  to  be  its  own  evidence,'  and  to 
connect  it  or  in  any  way  rest  it  on  'the  believed 
fact  of  the  Resurrection  of  Christ,'  as  the  first 
apostles  and  even  St.  Paul  (who  'more  than 
any  other  penetrated  to  the  spiritual  meaning 
of  Christianity')  did,  is  to  sink  to  the  attitude 
of  the  Jews  'who  demanded  of  Christ  signs  and 
wonders  that  they  might  believe  on  Him.' x  It 
seems  to  me  there  is  here  both  a  truth  and  a 
confusion.  The  truth  is  what  has  already  been 
said  more  than  once — that  the  basis  of  faith  in 

1  Evolution  of  Religion,  ii.  239,  sqq. 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         237 

immortality  is  the  spiritual  life  with  God,  and 
certainly  for  an  unbelief  which  has  not  that 
basis  to  ask  as  its  substitute  a  physical  demon- 
stration would  be  open  to  the  charge  of  seeking 
a  mere  sign  or  wonder.  But  it  is  not  the  same 
thing  to  say  that  this  faith — its  basis  still  the 
life  lived  with  God — finds  its  fulfilment  in  Jesus 
Christ,  who  is  come  to  be  not  merely  a  prophet 
but  the  end  of  prophecy.  It  is  the  latter  which 
is  the  Christian  position  as  regards  the  Resur- 
rection on  Easter-day.  This  was  not  a  sign 
given  to  unbelief  to  turn  it  into  faith,  but  the 
completed  word  of  God  to  a  faith  to  which  the 
victory  over  death  was  still  but  a  promise, — a 
word  given  by  Him  'in  whom  the  promises  of 
God  are  yea  and  amen.'  That  God,  revealing 
Himself  in  Christ,  should  make  good  that 
promise  may  or  may  not  be  incredible,  but  has 
certainly  nothing  in  it  which  is  unspiritual,  un- 
less indeed  the  whole  idea  of  an  historical  reve- 
lation be  unspiritual.  It  is  easy  for  philoso- 
phers to  take  the  attitude  of  being  superior  to 
the  need  for  anything  of  this  kind.  They  for- 
get they  are  living  to-day  after  eighteen  cen- 


238  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

turies  of  the  Easter  tradition.  I  will  go  so 
far  as  to  say  this — that  but  for  Easter,  faith 
in  immortality  would  be  only  a  rare  and  a 
sickly  plant  in  the  human  mind.  Certainly  it 
would  never  have  rung  through  the  world  as 
it  did  in  the  first  Christian  preaching.  Con- 
sider what  the  Easter  fact  meant  to  faith  in  this 
respect.  'Surely,'  said  this  one  and  that  among 
great  Old  Testament  saints  before  Christ, 
'surely  God  who  loves  us,  and  has  called  us 
into  fellowship  with  Himself,  does  not  and 
cannot  leave  us  to  die  in  the  dust.'  But  against 
this — to  which  after  all  only  high  souls  like 
the  author  of  the  seventy-third  Psalm  attained 
— remained  the  persistent  and  unshaken  witness 
of  death.  The  fathers,  where  are  they?  and 
the  prophets,  have  they  lived  for  ever?'  The 
only  answer  is  mors  ultima  line  a  rerum. 
Death  simply  went  on,  as  it  goes  on  with  us. 
They  buried  their  dead,  as  we  bury  them: 
The  rest  is  silence.'  Now  faith  might  and  did 
live  through  all  this,  for,  in  our  imperfect  lives, 
God  does  not  yet  fully  reveal  His  love  and 
power.     But  then  came  One  whom  these  be- 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         239 

lievers  found — and  we  too  find — reason  to  re- 
gard as  indeed  the  true  and  full  and  final  reve- 
lation. Well,  does  even  He  fulfil  this  hope, 
so  faithfully  clung  to  despite  such  uninterrupted 
denial,  that  not  death  but  life  is  God's  last 
word  with  the  children  of  His  love?  Or  here 
too,  with  even  the  'well-beloved  Son  of  the 
Father/  is  death  still  the  ultima  linea  and  the 
'rest'  still  'silence'?  If  so,  faith  must  just  go 
back  to  the  yet  uncontradicted  deed  of  death, 
with  its  great  hope,  not  merely  still  unverified 
but  discouraged  as  it  never  was  before. 

'Ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust: 

As  of  the  unjust,  also  of  the  just — 
Yea  of  that  Just   One  too! 

This  is  the  one  sad  gospel  that  is  true.'1 

I  repeat  I  do  not  see  much  reason  to  think 
that  if  the  last  available  fact  about  Jesus  Christ 
had  been  the  common  terminus  of  the  grave, 
the  religious  mind  would — except,  perhaps,  in 
a  few  instances — have  got  over  that.  Cer- 
tainly faith  would  never  have  triumphed  over 
it  if  the  Church  had  had  no  Easter  message, 

A.  H.  Clough,  Easter  Day,  i. 


24o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

and  if  the  New  Testament  were  not,  as  it  so 
conspicuously  is,  the  Book  of  the  Resurrection 
of  Jesus  Christ. 

Here  I  wish  to  say  that  it  is  to  fail  not  only 
in  charity  but  in  justice  to  speak  peremptorily 
to  those  whose  minds  are  inhospitable  to  the 
story  of  the  Resurrection,  and  are  perplexed  by 
obvious  difficulties.  I  can  quite  understand  a 
man  saying  that  here  is  something  to  which  it 
is  impossible  to  apply  the  tests  of  fact,  and 
which  has  yet  to  be  explained,  or  to  find  true 
forms  of  historical  expression.  I  can  sympa- 
thise with  that.  What  I  cannot  sympathise 
with,  and  what  I  find  it  difficult  to  treat  with 
any  intellectual  respect,  is  the  flimsy  account 
of  the  matter  which  is  sometimes  offered  to  us 
in  the  name  of  rational  criticism.  Here  is  a 
most  interesting  and  a  unique  historical  prob- 
lem— namely  to  give  some  rationale  of  the 
exultant  gospel  of  the  early  Church.  This  is 
a  fact,  and — it  should  be  remembered — a  fact 
far  older  than  any  document  of  the  Resurrec- 
tion story.  Now  do  not  tell  me  that  men,  who 
watched   their    Master's   pallid   head    sink    in 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         241 

death,  and  who  laid  His  lifeless  form  in  the 
grave,  got  over  the  impression  of  the  reality 
and  finality  of  that  in  a  few  days  on  the  strength 
of  this  kind  of  thing: — 

1  "He  must  come  again!"  The  men  whispered 
it  and  looked  longingly  at  each  other.  "He  must 
come  again:"  the  lake  whispered  it,  and  the  trees 
and  the  wind  in  the  night  about  them  in  that  region 
where  He  had  been  moving  about  only  two  weeks 
before.  "I  must  see  Him  again,"  said  Peter,  who 
had  denied  that  he  had  known  Him.  "If  not,  then 
I  cannot  live." 

'"Hark,  didst  thou  not  see  something,  Peter?" 
'The  next  day,  the  first  rumour  started.' 1 

And  so  on.  This,  we  are  told  (in  the  preface 
of  the  work  from  which  the  above  is  taken), 
is  the  start  of  the  story  'as  it  has  been  investi- 
gated by  German  scientific  study.'  A  highly 
touched-up  picture  like  this  is  the  last  thing 
that  has  the  right  to  call  itself  scientific  history. 
It  is  neither  science  nor  history:  it  is  fancy  from 
its  first  line  to  its  last.  To  begin  with,  the  only 
glimpse  we  have  of  the  state  of  mind  of  the 
followers  of  Jesus  after  His  death  is  not  any- 

Gustav  Frenssen's  Story  of  Jesus,  E.  T.,  pp.  75-6. 


242  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

thing  the  least  like  this  'He  must  come  again,' 
but  is  a  quiet  acceptance  of  it  that  all  was  over. 
'We  trusted  that  it  had  been  He  who  should 
have  redeemed  Israel;'  we  thought  it  would 
be,  but  it  is  not  to  be.  I  cannot  call  it  anything 
else  than  an  historical  impertinence,  calmly  and 
without  one  scrap  of  evidence,  to  substitute  for 
this  convincingly  genuine  glimpse  of  the  dis- 
ciples' mind,  a  purely  fancy  sketch  of  men 
whispering  'He  must  come  again.'  Further, 
even  if  Peter  was  in  this  pathetic,  not  to  say 
neurotic,  mood,  is  he  the  first  man  or  the  last 
who  has  yearned  to  see  again  a  dead  friend 
whom  in  life  he  had  wronged?  And  would 
the  love  of  those  who  thus  yearned  to  see  their 
dear  Master  be  content  to  build  on  'rumour;' 
would  it  not — just  because  it  was  love — make 
sure  about  it,  exactly  as  you  would  if  you  heard 
a  rumour  that  some  one  very  dear  to  you, 
whom  you  thought  had  been  dead,  was  yet 
alive?1  And  if  there  was  a  Peter  (or  a  Mary 

1  In  St.  Luke  xxiv.  22-4  we  find  disciples  actually  doing 
this;  the  result,  since  'Him  they  saw  not,'  left  them  only  'sad' 
(v.  17)   and  in  anything  but  the  mood  Frenssen  depicts. 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         243 

Magdalene)  to  start  these  rumours,  was  there 
not  a  Thomas  to  test  them?  Above  all,  were 
there  not  bitter  and  influential  enemies  of  the 
news,  who,  the  moment  it  was  proclaimed,  as 
it  indubitably  was  at  once,  could  prick  the 
bubble  in  a  day,  not  by  arguing  with  or  making 
martyrs  of  the  apostles,  but  simply  by  exhuming 
the  corpse?  I  do  not  here  argue  these  points; 
they  and  many  more  have  been  argued  many 
a  time.  The  inadequacy  of  the  whole  theory 
is  admitted  by  criticism  itself  in  the  fact  that 
it  must  be  buttressed  up  by  desperate  aids  such 
as  Keim's  of  a  'telegram  from  heaven'  telling 
the  disciples  Jesus  lived.1  I  repeat  that  I  have 
sympathy  with  those  who  find  in  the  Easter 
story  something  still  to  be  told  in  adequate 
forms  of  historical  expression;  but  I  find  noth- 
ing either  to  help  to  this  or  to  respect  historic- 
ally in  the  attempt  (as  a  modern  writer  aptly 
put  it)  'to  discredit  supernatural  stories  which 
have  some  foundation  simply  by  telling  natural 
stories  which  have  no  foundation.'2     This  is 

1  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  vi.  364. 

2  G.  K.  Chesterton's  Orthodoxy,  p.  75. 


244  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

indeed  to  make  history,  as  Carlyle  calls  it,  'a 
distillation  of  Rumour.'  For  my  part,  I  prefer 
my  history  neat. 

This  has  been  somewhat  of  a  digression;  yet 
the  Resurrection  of  Christ  is  historically  so 
great  a  factor  in  Christian  faith  that  a  refer- 
ence to  it  here  was  essential.  At  the  same  time, 
I  would  not  even  seem  to  make  this  the  basis 
of  the  Christian  belief  in  a  life  greater  than 
death.  It  is,  as  I  have  indicated,  the  fulfilment 
of  a  great  hope  as  to  that — 'Christ  the  first- 
fruits;'  but  the  basis  of  Christian  faith  in  im- 
mortality remains  the  love  of  God  Who  has 
called  us  unto  His  eternal  fellowship.  Socii 
Dei  sumus.  And  even  this  is  not  the  basis  of 
the  fact  of  immortality,  for  if  so  only  believers 
and  saints  would  be  immortal,  and  that,  as  a 
phrase  of  Plato's  puts  it,  'would  be  to  give 
the  bad  too  good  a  bargain.'  Napoleon  said 
on  his  deathbed,  N'est  pas  athee  qui  vent;  and 
similarly  may  it  be  said  not  every  one  is  mortal 
that  would  like  to  be.  But  it  may  seem  that 
to  base  even  faith  in  immortality — as  distin- 
guishable from  the  fact  of  it — on  the  experi- 


THE  VETO  OF  DEATH         245 

ence  of  fellowship  with  God  means  that  only 
the  saints  can  have  a  really  sure  hope  as  to 
the  life  eternal.  How  many  of  us  can  claim 
so  deep  a  religious  experience  as  to  enable  us 
to  say  we  know  God  has  pledged  His  love  to 
us  in  a  way  which  makes  it  impossible  for  us 
to  be  left  in  the  grave?  Well,  it  is  true  that 
immortality  is  not  to  be  believed  in  lightly:  in- 
deed, when  it  is  believed  in  lightly,  it  is  not 
believed  in  at  all.  Yet,  we  need  not  therefore 
say  that  only  the  saints  can  know  it.  For  it 
is  not  only  the  saints  whom  the  love  of  God 
has  called  into  fellowship  with  Himself.  That 
God  loves  us,  speaks  to  us,  redeems  us,  keeps 
hold  of  us — all  this  may  be  not  less  surely 
brought  home  to  us  sinners.  It  is  in  the  ex- 
perience of  many  who  are  far  indeed  from  pre- 
suming to  regard  themselves  as  advanced  in 
spiritual  things.  Therefore  we  too  may  dare 
to  learn  this  sublime  faith  in  the  life  greater 
than  death  which  is  pledged  to  us  by  God  our 
Father.  We  may  learn  it  as  regards  others — 
our  dear  dead  whom  we  think  of,  perhaps, 
every  day — and  shall  then,  even  when  also  sad, 


246  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

be  expectant  and  even  elate.  We  may  learn  it 
as  regards  even  ourselves,  learning  it  here,  it 
may  be,  with  something  of  that  incredulous 
surprise  with  which  once  a  thief  on  a  cross, 
dying  the  bitter  death  and  the  blackness  of 
night  settling  down  upon  his  soul,  heard  the 
amazing  assurance  that  he — he! — would  enter 
Paradise. 


VII 
THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY 


'The  action  of  Christ,  who  is  risen  upon  the  world 
which  He  has  redeemed,  fails  not  but  increases.' 

LORD    ACTON. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY 

The  discussions  in  the  foregoing  chapters  have 
obviously  not  covered  all  'facts  of  life' — no 
one  in  reason  could  expect  that  they  should — 
but  I  trust  that  it  has  been  found  by  the  reader 
that  the  aspects  of  the  problem  raised  for  faith 
in  life  which  have  been  dealt  with  are  typical 
and  also  crucial  aspects;  and  further,  that  these 
have  been  dealt  with,  while  certainly  not  ex- 
haustively, at  least  not  evasively.  Other  di- 
rections along  which  similar  discussions  might 
be  pursued  at  once  suggest  themselves.  But 
I  desire  to  bring  this  book — which,  since  the 
majority  of  things  in  the  world  of  utterance 
are  too  long,  shall  avoid  that  fault  to  atone 
for  whatever  others  it  may  exhibit — to  a  close, 
and  I  think  this  last  chapter  may  more  usefully 
be  turned  in  a  different  direction.  Christianity 
is  not  merely  a  fact  of  personal  life;  it  is  also 
249 


250  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

a  fact  of  the  life  of  the  world.  It  is  what  the 
Germans  call  welt-historisch.  It  may  therefore 
be  tested  in  the  light  of  history,  which  is  the 
most  impartial  of  intellectual  tribunals,  and  in 
relation  to  facts  larger  than  the  facts  of  the 
merely  individual  life.  This  more  compre- 
hensive consideration  of  the  problem  of  faith 
demands  some  attention  before  we  close. 

Let  us,  however,  particularise  the  issue 
within  reasonable  limits.  I  have  no  intention 
here — and  it  would  be  manifestly  absurd  to 
attempt  it  within  a  single  chapter — to  delineate 
the  Christian  philosophy  of  history  or  even  to 
describe  the  witness  of  the  Christian  centuries 
to  faith  in  any  general  way.  Nor  shall  I  dis- 
cuss the  general  relations  between  Christianity 
and  the  great  civilisation  into  which  it  entered, 
nor  even  the  historic  theme  of  how  it  was  the 
faith  of  Christ  which  saved  civilisation  from  a 
despairing  dissolution  at  that  unparalleled  and 
indeed  appalling  hour  when  the  Roman  Em- 
pire, sole  trustee  of  the  order  of  the  world,  was 
foundering  in  the  shoals  of  time,  not  from  any 
remediable    breakdown    of    its    constitutional 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    251 

machinery,  nor  from  any  lack  of  knowledge  of 
essential  political  or  even  moral  principles,  but 
simply  and  literally  because  men,  being  without 
God  and  without  hope  in  the  world,  were  im- 
potent to  carry  on  the  greatness  or  goodness, 
and  were  preserving  only  the  degradation  and 
corruption  of  the  past.  Here  are  subjects 
which  never  lose  their  grandeur  of  interest  for 
the  student  of  the  human  drama — subjects, 
however,  not  to  be  attempted  within  the  limits 
of  this  chapter.  Our  aim  here  must  be  some- 
thing very  much  simpler  and  also  something 
nearer  to  hand. 

Let  us,  as  in  our  previous  discussions,  take 
a  few  typical  and  crucial  test  points  which  may 
illustrate  the  verdict  or  comment  of  the  cen- 
turies on  the  claim  of  Christian  faith,  and  which 
may  be  answered  without  elaborate  historical 
research.  Especially  let  us  take  points  which 
may  be  tested  in  the  light  of  the  present  day. 
We  are  starting  from  the  position  that  time 
tests  things.  It  places  men  and  movements  as 
hardly  anything  else  does;  it  adjusts  their  valu- 
ation.    Especially  does  it  reduce  any  exagger- 


252  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

ated  estimates  to  their  due  proportions.  Thus, 
as  Bacon  says,  'truth  has  been  rightly  named 
the  daughter  of  time.'  From  this  point  of 
view,  then,  let  us  ask  this  question,  what  does 
to-day  say  of  the  estimate  which  faith  has  put 
alike  upon  the  Master  and  upon  the  message 
of  Christianity?  Has  the  view  that  Jesus 
Christ  is  not  merely  one  man  in  the  world's 
population  but  the  Lord  and  Saviour  of  all  men 
been  found  out,  by  the  test  of  nearly  twenty 
centuries,  to  be  an  untenable  exaggeration? 
Does  the  idea  that  the  Christian  gospel  is  in- 
deed the  Word  of  God  which  endureth  for 
ever  and  the  absolute  and  final  religion  hold 
good  in  our  modern  world  with  its  essentially 
modern  problems?  These  are  important  ques- 
tions for  faith;  in  dealing  with  them  I  shall 
try  to  take,  as  has  been  said,  typical  and  crucial 
points  which  will  test  the  issue. 

First,  then,  we  shall  ask  what  is  the  comment 
of  time  as  regards  the  estimate  of  Jesus  Him- 
self. This  is  primary,  for  Christianity  is  not 
a  system  but  an  attachment  to  a  Person.  Here 
we  are  concerned  not  with  ecclesiastical  dogma 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    253 

but  with  facts  of  life  and  of  the  world.  Now, 
amidst  all  the  doctrinal  dubiety  prevalent  in 
the  modern  theological  mind,  there  are  facts 
about  Jesus  which  are  clearer  to-day  than  ever 
they  have  been.  From  these  I  take  one  of  most 
relevant  interest  for  our  question. 

It  is  this.  When  Jesus  lived  on  earth  His 
followers  declared  of  Him  that  'He  did  no  sin/ 
He  Himself,  indeed,  is  reported  to  have  chal- 
lenged any  one  to  convict  Him  of  sin,  and  not 
even  His  enemies  could  take  up  the  challenge. 
So  'the  sinlessness  of  Jesus'  has  always  been  a 
theme  which  has  found  a  place  in  religious  and 
theological  thought.  But  there  is  something 
not  very  satisfying  about  such  an  expression. 
It  is  negative,  and  emphasises  what  Jesus  was 
not  rather  than  conveys  any  rich  and  living  idea 
of  what  He  was.  But  the  richness  of  what  He 
was  could  not  be  perceived  at  once.  It  could 
not  be  fully  apprehended  by  His  contempora- 
ries. It  is  only  as  the  ages  have  gone  on,  and 
as  men  of  different  epochs  and  different  types 
have  been  brought  into  contact  with  Jesus,  that 
the  content  of  His  personality  has  been  made 


254 


THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 


apparent.  The  result  is  something  far  richer 
and  most  positive  than  anything  which  is  ex- 
pressed by  the  mere  negative  of  the  word  'sin- 
less.' It  is  better  expressed  if  we  say  that  Jesus 
has  proved  to  be  the  complete,  the  perfect 
humanity.  Sinlessness  excludes,  and  it  excludes 
one  element — that  which  is  bad.  But  the  com- 
plete or  perfect  humanity  of  Jesus  includes 
everything  which  is  good.  He  is  not  merely 
the  supreme  saint;  He  is  the  Son  of  Man.  The 
ages,  which  in  the  case  of  every  other  great 
figure  of  the  past  discovers  his  limitations,  in 
this  case  disclose  a  humanity  which  has  no  limi- 
tations but  is  an  ideal  and  inspiration  for  man- 
kind in  every  age.  Here  is  not  a  great  Jew 
of  the  first  century.  Here  is  more  even  than 
a  man:  here  is  Man. 

All  this  may  seem  somewhat  general,  and 
the  reader  will  ask  that  this  completeness  or 
perfection  said  to  be  in  Jesus  Christ  should  be 
stated  in  plainer  terms  as  a  fact  in  life  and 
history.  Well,  it  is  a  fact  in  life  and  history 
wherever  Christianity  has  been  genuinely  ex- 
emplified that  not  one  age  only  nor  one  type 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    255 

of  character  only,  but  every  type  (that  is,  of 
course,  which  is  not  morally  evil)  in  every  age 
has  learned  its  highest  in  the  school  of  Christ. 
There  is  not  in  the  whole  range  of  human 
nature  anything  which  is  good  which  is  not 
strengthened,  deepened,  purified  by  contact 
with  Him.  His  personality  reaches  past  the 
dividing  lines  which  separate  humankind  into 
classes  and  schools  and  sects.  That  this  is  so 
of  merely  social  or  educational  or  ecclesiastical 
divisions  is  not  wonderful;  but  He  overreaches 
divisions  far  deeper  than  these.  The  deepest 
and  most  ineffaceable  dividing  lines  that  cross 
the  area  of  human  life  are,  I  take  it,  race  and 
sex.  As  to  the  former,  is  it  not  true  that  Jesus 
Christ  is  as  much  to  the  Christian  in  England 
to-day  as  He  was  to  the  Jews  in  Palestine  who 
first  called  Him  Master — so  much  so  that  we 
in  England  practically  never  think  of  Him  as 
having  been  a  Jew;  and  further,  that  He  is 
nothing  more  to  the  Christian  in  England  than 
He  is  to  the  Christian  in  the  far  Orient  or  in 
the  heart  of  Africa?  As  to  the  latter  of  these 
dividing  lines,    is   it   not   enough  to   say   that 


256  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

womanhood  no  less  than  manhood,  as  manhood 
no  less  than  womanhood,  has  found  in  Him  its 
inspiration  and  ideal?  These  are  plain  facts 
of  life  and  history  which  the  centuries  have 
proved  to  every  candid  mind.  They  mean  a 
character  to  be  described  by  some  far  more 
positive  and  opulent  term  than  'sinless.'  Even 
'perfect'  seems  too  vague  and  general  a  word. 
They  mean  a  personality  of  which  we  must  say 
this,  that  it  is  adequate  for  all  humanity  as  its 
inspiration  and  ideal.  There  is  no  other  who 
has  been  born  of  woman  of  whom  anything 
even  approaching  to  this  may  be  said.  There 
have  been  great  men;  there  has  been  but  One 
who  is  Man. 

About  this  a  further  thing  is  to  be  said  which 
it  is  of  importance  to  say  in  view  of  modern 
philosophies  which  vehemently  turn  away  from 
Christ  for  at  least  some  ideals  of  character. 
What  has  been  urged  may  seem  to  suggest  that 
Jesus  is  a  little  of  every  one  because  not  very 
pronouncedly  any  one  thing  in  particular — that 
He  is  what,  in  Aristotelian  phrase,  may  be 
called  a  'mean,'  rather  than  the  ideal  of  any 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    257 

specific  type  of  life,  especially  of  the  stronger 
kind.  Nothing  could  be  further  from  the  truth 
than  this.  On  the  contrary,  in  Him  and  in 
contact  with  Him  the  varying  elements  in 
human  nature — again,  of  course,  which  are  not 
evil — come  to  their  height.  There  is  no  abase- 
ment like  the  shame  He  evokes  and  no  noble- 
ness like  the  honour  He  confers;  none  are  so 
submissive  as  the  Christian,  none  so  inflexible; 
the  worldling  has  no  such  sorrow  and  no  such 
joy;  nowhere  are  greater  sympathy  and  tender- 
ness and  love,  but  nowhere  a  judgment  so 
searching,  a  severity  so  terrible,  so  awful  a 
hate.  The  gospel  does  not  take  all  the  aspects 
of  human  nature  and  boil  them  down  into  one 
tasteless  and  colourless  jelly;  it  takes  each  one 
and  purifies  it  till  it  is  tenfold  itself.  That  is 
why  the  Christian  is — has  proved  himself  in 
history — at  once  the  weakest  and  the  strongest 
man  in  the  world. 

It  is  on  this  last  point  I  wish  to  say  a  word 
in  view  of  current  philosophies,  and  especially 
the  philosophy  of  one  remarkable,  if  also  un- 
hinged,  writer  of  modern   days.      Finding  in 


258  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

Christ  such  characteristics  as  gentleness,  meek- 
ness, forgiveness,  Nietzsche  rejects  Him  as 
'decadent'1  and  His  morality  as  the  'morality 
of  slaves,'  preaching  to  us  instead  the  ideal  of 
the  'super-man'  who  shall  exemplify  a  'morality 
of  mastery'  in  a  life  which  above  all  else — 
above  even  distinctions  of  good  and  evil — is 
'power.'  I  shall  not  stay  to  repel  this  de- 
scription of  Jesus,  which,  coming  from  poor 
Nietzsche,  is  pitiable  even  more  than  profane. 
Let  us  at  once  test  the  two  prophets  and  their 
gospels  in  life  and  history.  And  this  I  will 
say  confidently — in  countless  lives  Christ  has 
created  the  heroic,  while  Nietzsche  evokes  only 
the  hectic.  This  so-called  'powerful'  morality 
appeals  not  to  genuine  virility,  but  rather  to 
that  kind  of  femininity  which  is  mastered  by 
mere  egotism.2  And  it  is  no  contribution  to 
power  to  declare  'I  preach  the  over-man;'  the 
thing  is  to  produce  him.    When  Nietzsche  calls 

1  The  Anti-Christ:   An   Attempt  at  a   Criticism   of   Chris- 
tianity, §  31. 

2  This  is  an  echo  of  a  remark  made  somewhere  by  Eucken. 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    259 

for  'masters,'  we  remember  the  immortal  re- 
tort : — 

'Why  so  can  I  and  so  can  any  man : 

But  will  they  come  when  you  do  call  for  them?'i 

What  we  want  from  the  prophet  is  the  source 
of  strength.  That  is  not  merely  shouting;  a 
really  strong  man  does  not  go  about  announcing 
(as  Henley  does)  an  'unconquerable  soul'  and 
that  the  years  will  'find  me  unafraid.'2  Nor  is 
the  source  of  strength  a  spirit  that  scoffs  at 
love  and  pity  and  tenderness;  a  man  is  never 
at  his  strongest  when  he  is  only  strength.  Here 
is  the  source  of  it.  The  strongest  thing  in  all 
human  history  has  been  not  a  sword  but  a 
Cross.  'When  I  am  weak  then  am  I  strong' — 
that  is  the  secret.  The  gospel  has  it,  and  that 
is  why  the  Christianity  of  the  Cross  has  been 
an  anvil  which  has  broken  many  hammers. 
This  combination  of  apparent  contradictories 

1  Shakespere's  King  Henry  IV.,  Pt.  I.  iii.  i. 

2  From   Henley's  poem  entitled  Invictus — a  striking  poem, 
no  doubt,  in  some  respects. 


26o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

is  unique  in  Christianity.  Mr.  Chesterton 
states  it  in  his  characteristic  style : — 

'It  is  constantly  assumed,  especially  in  our  Tol- 
stoyan  tendencies,  that  when  the  lion  lies  down 
with  the  lamb,  the  lion  becomes  lamb-like.  But 
that  is  brutal  annexation  and  imperialism  on  the 
part  of  the  lamb.  That  is  simply  the  lamb  absorb- 
ing the  lion  instead  of  the  lion  absorbing  the  lamb. 
The  real  problem  is:  Can  the  lion  lie  down  with 
the  lamb  and  still  retain  his  royal  ferocity?  That 
is  the  problem  the  Church  attempted;  that  is  the 
miracle  she  achieved.'1 

It  was  not  the  Church  that  did  it  but  Christ; 
but,  that  aside,  the  statement  is  not  more  epi- 
grammatical  than  historical. 

All  this,  of  course,  does  not  mean  that  the 
centuries  are  the  basis  of  faith  in  Christ.     He 

1  Orthodoxy,  p.  177.  The  superabundant  cleverness  of  this 
book  is  really  its  fatal  defect  as  a  plea  for  Christianity.  For 
the  one  thing  which  cleverness  never  does  is  to  touch  the  con- 
science, and  this  is  the  spot  which  Christianity  cannot  leave 
untouched.  Thus  Orthodoxy  is  an  example  of  a  brilliant 
religious  apologia  which  leaves  behind  it  hardly  anything  of 
a  religious  impression.  However,  it  takes  all  kinds  of  people 
to  convert  the  world,  and  this  feature  of  Mr.  Chesterton's 
work  should  not  prevent  the  reader  from  perceiving  the  sound- 
ness of  many  positions  in  it  regarding  Christianity,  which  the 
book  lights  up,  if  not  with  apostolic  fire,  certainly  with 
astonishing  fireworks. 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    261 

is  that  to  Himself  as  One  whose  fellowship 
and  forgiveness  are  for  us  of  God.  But  the 
ages  are  a  corollary  to  faith  because  they  have 
not  reduced  the  Figure  who  claims  to  be  more 
than  merely  one  other  man  among  men.  Time 
has  tested  Jesus,  who  presented  Himself  as 
a  Lord  and  Saviour  of  men,  and  it  has  not 
found  Him  wanting  as  new  epochs  arose,  new 
races  were  discovered,  new  types  of  life  and 
character  were  brought  into  contact  with  Him. 
Time  has  placed  Jesus,  not  as  merely  a  Jewish 
peasant  of  a  now  long-past  day,  but  as  adequate 
to  be  the  ideal  and  the  inspiration  of  all  time 
and  of  the  whole  humankind.  The  best  and 
last  proof  of  this  is  personal.  My  best  self  is 
recognised  and  realised  before  and  with  Him: 
yours,  too.  This  is  indeed  the  Son  of  Man 
and  Saviour  of  us  all. 

Amplifications  and  illustrations  of  how  Jesus 
Christ  has  thus  proved  adequate  to  history  sug- 
gest themselves,  and  are  indeed  obvious;  but  we 
must  pass  on  to  the  other  part  of  our  theme, 
and  inquire  what  comment  time  has  made  on 
the  Christian  message.     Here  one  crucial  test 


262  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

may  suffice.  If  Christianity  be  the  supreme 
Word  of  God  it  claims  to  be,  then  it  must 
have  the  element  of  finality.  That,  of  course, 
does  not  mean  that  its  content  is  discovered 
once  and  for  all.  On  the  contrary,  the  content 
of  Christianity  is  only  gradually  being  dis- 
covered; we  have  yet  to  learn  what,  for  ex- 
ample, the  Oriental  mind  will  find  in  it  in  ad- 
dition to  what  the  Greek  or  Latin  or  Teutonic 
mind  has  found.  Finality,  in  this  connection, 
means  that  the  gospel  never  becomes  obsolete, 
or  something  which,  whatever  value  it  may 
have  had  for  circumstances  of  another  day,  is 
of  no  essential  value  for  the  new  conditions  of 
the  world,  and  may  therefore  be  superseded 
and  discarded.  This  is  a  crucial  test  of  the 
message  of  Christianity  as  the  supreme  and 
absolute  religion,  and  it  is  one  which  may  well 
be  applied  after  twenty  centuries  and  in  view 
of  the  facts  and  problems  of  to-day.  It  is, 
moreover,  a  test  of  peculiar  significance  for  an 
age  such  as  ours,  which  is  so  conscious  of  the 
immense  advance  which  recent  years  have  wit- 
nessed in  every  department  of  thought  that  to 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    263 

be  even  'early  Victorian'  is  to  be  little  better 
than  a  dodo.  Whatever  the  present  age  is,  for 
good  or  evil,  certainly  it  is  a  new  age.  The 
result  of  this  is  that,  in  a  great  deal  of  modern 
thinking  or  writing,  there  is  almost  the  assump- 
tion that  Christian  faith  and  Christian  ethics 
cannot  be  looked  to  for  the  solving  of  modern 
questions.  Indeed,  the  very  idea  of  finality,  in 
religion  as  in  anything  else,  is  to  the  present- 
day  mind  unacceptable  and  intolerable.  The 
truth  is  that  the  strong  wine  of  evolution  'has 
rather  gone  to  the  head  of  the  modern  philos- 
opher, and  he  lays  down  its  principles  a  priori 
as  applying  to  Christ  and  to  Christianity  with- 
out any  special  examination  of  the  facts.  It  is 
true  and  indeed  notable  that  there  is  to-day  no 
very  serious  attempt  to  produce  or  predict  a 
better  religion — the  new  teacher  whose  coming 
is,  I  understand,  anticipated  in  theosophical 
circles,  need  not  be  discussed  till  he  arrives — 
but  there  is  the  wide  acceptance,  on  general 
evolutionary  grounds,  of  the  idea  that  're- 
ligions, like  all  things  that  are  ours  and  human, 
have  their  day  of  declension;  nor  can  Chris- 
is 


264  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

tianity  form  an  exception  to  the  universal 
rule.'1  Well,  this  last  remark  says  something 
which  is  not  to  be  settled  simply  by  laying  down 
a  priori  a  supposed  'universal  rule,'  but  only 
by  a  fair  examination  of  the  facts  about  what 
Christianity  is  and  can  do  to-day.  This  is  what 
we  propose  to  test. 

I  wish  to  test  this  in  as  precise  and  practical 
a  way  as  possible;  what  that  way  is  I  shall 
state  presently.  First,  however,  one  word  may 
be  said  of  a  general  character  about  this  'rule' 
that  religions  decline  and  are  superseded. 
What  sets  this  in  operation  is  visible  in  history. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  force  which  most  surely 
has  caused  religions  of  the  past  to  be  discarded 
is  when  their  ideas — and  especially  their  ideas 
of  God — have  been  felt  to  be  inadequate  and 
unworthy  by  the  growing  moral  sense  of  the 
people.  A  notable  and  interesting  example  is 
the  ethical  criticism  which  undermined  the  an- 
cient Greek  religion.  In  that  religion,  the  lives 
of  the  gods  were  a  story  of  constant  amours 
and  intrigues  and  crimes.     But  the  ethical  sense 

1  J.  A.  Symonds's  Essays,  Speculative  and  Suggestive,  p.  5. 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    265 

of  the  best  minds  in  Greece  began  to  criticise 
this.  Euripides,  for  example,  reproaches  the 
god  Apollo  (who  had  seduced  and  then  de- 
serted Creusa)  just  as  a  right-minded  man 
to-day  might  denounce  a  betrayer  of  woman. 
Plato  refuses  to  take  as  true  of  God  Homer's 
story  that  Zeus  sends  to  men  lying  dreams.  It 
was  this  kind  of  ethical  criticism  that  simply 
killed  the  old  paganism  of  Greek  legend, 
though  it  thus  served  morality.  Now  I  hardly 
need  to  argue  that  faith  in  the  God  revealed  in 
Jesus  Christ — I  do  not  say  the  God  described 
in  theologies — is  in  no  danger  of  being  super- 
seded in  this  way.  No  one  can  demand  in  the 
name  of  conscience  a  purer  or  more  moral  and 
spiritual  idea  of  God  than  is  in  the  face  of 
Jesus.  That  idea  may  be  too  high  and  good 
to  be  true;  but  certainly  the  most  ethically  sen- 
sitive mind  cannot  say  it  is  not  high  or  good 
enough  to  be  worthy  of  God.  'What  we  mean 
by  God,'  says  Goethe,  'is  just  the  best  we  know.' 
Do  we  know  or  can  we  even  conceive  what  is 
better  than  Christ?  Along  this  line,  then,  of 
ethical  criticism — which  has  been  in  the  past  the 


266  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

surest  solvent  of  religious  beliefs — Christian 
faith  is  in  no  danger  of  being  superseded.  But 
I  shall  not  develop  this,  nor  make  any  further 
general  remark  on  the  declension  of  historical 
religions;  let  us  come  to  those  precise  and  prac- 
tical tests  of  the  question  before  us  of  which 
I  spoke. 

The  line  I  suggest  we  should  take  is  this. 
There  are  in  the  present  day  questions  pecul- 
iarly characteristic  of  our  times — what,  indeed, 
we  call  'questions  of  the  day.'  They  have 
arisen  in  history  long  after  Christianity  arose. 
I  think  it  will  be  recognised  that  it  is  a  precise 
and  practical  test  of  whether  the  gospel  is  a 
message  only  for  its  own  epoch,  now  long 
passed,  or  whether  it  has  continuous  and  ever 
new  truth  in  it  for  every  age,  if  we  inquire 
how  far  it  has  got  it  in  it  to  touch  and  even 
to  be  indispensable  in  the  solution  of  problems 
such  as  these — problems  characteristic  of  the 
modern  world  and  problems  which  were  not 
even  in  the  horizon  of  the  mind  of  the  genera- 
tion to  which  Christianity  first  came.  There 
are  two  such  'questions  of  the  day'  which  sup- 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    267 

ply — as  again  will,  I  think,  be  recognised — 
adequate  and  appropriate  tests  of  these.  One 
is  what  is  called  the  social  problem;  the  other 
what  is  called  the  woman's  movement.  The 
names  are  somewhat  vague,  but  are  sufficient. 
The  bearing  of  these  two  matters  on  the  issue 
before  us  I  propose  briefly  to  consider. 

In  the  first  place,  a  reflection  suggests  itself 
about  the  existence  or  rather  the  rise  of  prob- 
lems such  as  these.  They  have  more  immedi- 
ately emerged  in  our  time  from  education — 
from,  in  the  one  case,  popular  education,  and, 
in  the  other,  the  higher  education  of  women. 
But  their  ultimate  source  is  far  further  back 
than  that.  It  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  within 
the  area  of  Christianity,  and  within  this  area 
only,  that  any  such  questions  have  originated. 
They  have  not  arisen  within  other  religions, 
even  within  a  religion  so  humane  as  Buddhism; 
they  have  not  been  originated  by  secular  phi- 
losophies, even  a  philosophy  so  enlightened  as 
that  of  Aristotle.  And  it  is  not  difficult  to  per- 
ceive how  this  is  so.  Both  of  these  questions 
are  at  bottom  questions  of  personality.     The 


268  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

social  question,  in  its  demands  for  higher  wages 
and  better  conditions  and  restricted  hours  of 
labour,  is  not  merely  an  attempt — whether  just 
or  otherwise — on  the  part  of  the  'have-nots' 
to  dispossess  the  'haves;'  deeper  than  that,  it 
is  the  effort  of  the  suppressed  personality  of 
masses  of  the  people  who  are  awaking  to  feel 
they  have  the  right  to  the  life  not  of  machines 
but  of  beings  with  a  soul  to  be  called  their  own. 
The  woman's  question  is  not  merely  an  agita- 
tion— justifiable  or  otherwise — for  a  political 
franchise;  deeper  than  that,  it  is  essentially  a 
demand  that  women  shall  not  any  more  be  re- 
garded as  a  subordinate  means  towards  the 
life  of  the  other  sex,  but  shall  be  recognised 
as,  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word,  human  persons 
possessing,  as  truly  as  man  does,  that  person- 
ality which  is  not  a  means  but  an  end.  I  think 
I  am  not  wrong  in  saying  that  here  is  the  root- 
thought  common  to  both  these  movements. 
Now  there  can  be  no  question  whence  this 
thought  of  the  respect  due  to  the  personality  of 
the  worker  or  of  woman  took  its  birth — in,  at 
least,  any  practical  and  effective  sense.     It  was 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    269 

in  this  way  the  gospel  spoke  to  the  worker  and 
to  woman.  Most  truly  has  Guizot  said:  'Ce 
n'est  pas  Montesquieu,  c'est  Jesus-Christ  qui  a 
rendu  au  genre  hum  am  ses  titres.'1  To  this, 
indeed,  must  be  added  the  humiliating  admis- 
sion that  this  thought  of  the  Christian  gospel 
about  the  personality  of  the  worker  or  of 
woman  has  not  been  carried  out  in  the  practice 
of  the  so-called  Christian  state,  nor  has  it 
always  been  even  in  the  Church  that  its  most 
faithful  advocates  have  been  found.  This  're- 
proach of  the  gospel'2 — as  Mr.  Peile  has  en- 
titled his  recent  Bampton  Lecture — is  undeni- 
able. It  has  its  effect  not  only  in  alienating 
masses  at  home  from  Christianity  because  of 
social  wrongs  done  or  tolerated  under  its  name, 
but  also  in  counteracting  the  appeal  of  Jesus 
Christ  to  heathen  peoples,  who,  seeing  the 
slums  and  the  streets  of  any  city  in  modern 
Christendom,  are  repelled  rather  than  attracted 
to  a  religion  of  which  these  are  the  fruits.  But 
all  this — which  arises  out  of  the  fact  that  Jesus 

1  L'Eglise,  p.  153. 

2  The  Bampton  Lecture  for  1907,  by  the  Rev.  James  W.  F. 
Peile,  M.A. 


2;o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

Christ  has  linked  His  gospel  and  even  His 
reputation  with  a  human  stewardship  which  has 
proved  so  unfaithful  as  to  be  in  danger  of 
being  suffered  to  be  steward  no  longer — does 
not  alter  the  historical  circumstances  in  which 
such  questions  as  those  that  have  been  named 
have  taken  their  rise.  We  semi-Christian  na- 
tions have  not  done  right  by  the  worker  or  by 
woman;  but  we  know  there  is  the  right  to  be 
done.  And  where  did  we  first  learn  that? 
There  is,  I  repeat,  no  question  as  to  the  an- 
swer. We  first  learned  it,  or  rather  heard  it — 
for  learned  it  have  we  hardly  yet — not  from 
any  socialists  or  feminists,  but  from  Him  who 
died  for  the  slave  as  for  the  free,  and  who 
spoke  to  the  soul  of  a  woman  on  the  same  level 
as  to  the  soul  of  a  man. 

But  I  turn  to  the  questions  themselves,  and 
first  to  the  social  problem.  The  phrase  is  in- 
effably vague,  yet  its  meaning  is  very  real  to 
every  awakened  mind  and  conscience.  The 
seemingly  hopeless  disorder  and  distress  and 
degradation  of  the  conditions  of  life  of  masses 
of  men  and  women  and  children  in  this  twenti- 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    271 

eth  Christian  century  begets  a  profound  pessi- 
mism within  the  heart  of  any  one  who  even 
looks  over  the  edge  of  the  social  abyss;  but  it 
is  to-day  what  I  will  call  an  ethical  pessmism. 
It  is  not  the  feeling  which  we  perceive  at  the 
close  of  the  Middle  Ages,  when  men  found  the 
world  so  hopelessly  bad  that  they  could  do 
nothing  but  wait  for  the  coming  judge : — 

'Hora  noviss'una,  tempora  pess'ima  sunt;  vigilemus! 
Ecce  minaciter  imminet  Arbiter,  llle  Supremus/'1 

The  pessimism  of  to-day  in  face  of  social  facts 
is  deep;  but  why  is  it  deep?  It  is  deep  because 
it  has,  with  new  resolution,  set  itself  not  to 
'watch'  but  to  work.  Therefore  it  realises  the 
difficulty  and  desperateness  of  the  problem  as 
the  world  never  did  wrhen  it  simply  left  it  alone 
or  even  simply  left  it  to  the  judgment  of  God. 
This  is  a  new  kind  of  pessimism,  and  there  is 
something  at  least  like  a  hope  at  the  heart  of 

1  Bernard  of  Clugny's  De   Contemptu  Mundi.     Translated 
by  Neale  in  the  well-known  lines: — 

'The  world  is  very  evil, 

The  times  are  waxing  late; 
Be  sober  and  keep  vigil, 
The  Judge  is  at  the  gate.' 


272  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

it.  To  say  it  proves  the  dawn  must  follow  is 
to  say  too  much;  but,  certainly,  this  is  the  kind 
of  darkness  which  must  precede  the  dawn. 

Not,  however,  to  dwell  on  this,  I  pass  to  our 
particular  point,  which  is  how  far  the  Christian 
gospel  is  vitally  related  to  this  problem  and 
essential  in  the  solution  of  it.  Now,  on  the 
surface,  social  reform  is  a  question  of  political 
administration  which  shall  effect  a  just  re- 
organisation of  the  material  conditions  of  life. 
As  such  it  may  appear  to  be  a  purely  civil  and 
secular  concern,  with  which  the  gospel,  even 
though  touching  all  that  is  human,  can  hardly 
be  said  to  be  essentially  connected.  But  in  the 
whole  trend  of  modern  thinking  on  the  subject, 
it  is  becoming  more  and  more  clear  that  the 
solution  of  the  social  problem  is  not  merely  a 
matter  of  political  administration  nor  of  merely 
the  adjustment  of  the  outward  conditions  of 
life.     Let  us  look  at  this  and  whither  it  leads. 

That  the  problem  is  to-day  being  worked  out 
on  administrative  and  legislative  lines  is  itself 
a  development  from  the  days  of  the  classic  so- 
cialism of  Karl  Marx,  who  predicted  an  even 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    273 

keener  class  war  between  capital  and  labour 
till  at  last,  when  the  intermediate  class  had 
been  crushed  out  of  existence,  there  would  be 
a  decisive  conflict  by  which,  he  believed,  the 
forces  of  labour  would  wrest  the  supremacy 
from  the  enemy  and  establish  a  new  order. 
That  this  has  not  actually  come  true,  and  (in 
this  country,  at  least)  is  not  likely  to  come  true, 
is  only  because  this  conflict — which,  Marx 
seemed  to  forget,  is  not  between  two  abstract 
forces  which  go  blindly  to  their  fate,  but  among 
men  who  can  foresee  and  to  some  extent  divert 
disasters — has  been  evaded  by  the  mediation 
of  various  kinds  of  legislative  and  administra- 
tive concessions,  which  have  at  least  provision- 
ally and  at  the  acutest  points  taken  the  edge 
off  the  antagonism.  In  this  way  has  a  con- 
stitutional socialism  largely  taken  the  place  of 
a  revolutionary  one.1  Instead  of  smashing  the 
machine,  social  reformers  now  capture  it. 
They  got  into  Parliament,  as  the  Labour  Party 
do,  to  promote  their  ends;  or  they  set  them- 

1  I  say  'largely,'  not  entirely,  for  the  revolutionary  principle 
still  lives,  and  was  recently  revived  in  what  is  known  as 
syndicalism. 


274  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

selves,  as  so  notably  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Sidney 
Webb  have  done,  to  educate  expert  opinion  on 
the  subject.  This  administrative  and  legis- 
lative social  reform  is  going  on  more  and  more, 
and  in  this  sense  we  are,  as  a  statesman  of  the 
last  generation1  said,  'all  socialists  to-day.' 
And  so  we  should  be  and  must  be.  The  single 
fact  that  there  are  millions  of  our  people — to 
speak  only  of  England — who  are  compelled  to 
live  in  conditions  which  give  the  life  neither 
of  body  nor  soul  hardly  a  chance,  and  'who,  if 
they  spent  every  farthing  they  possessed  on 
the  bare  necessities  of  life,  would  still  be  under- 
fed and  inadequately  clothed,'2  makes  a  de- 
mand for  economic  adjustment  which  must  be 
met  by  legislative  and  administrative  reform. 
But  the  interesting  feature  of  much  of  the 
best  modern  thinking  on  the  question  of  how 
it  is  to  be  done  is  this.  It  is  those  most  ad- 
vanced in  their  convictions  about  social  reform 
in  the  political  sense  who  see  most  clearly  that 

1  Sir  William  Harcourt,  I  think  it  was. 
2 'The  Industrial  Unrest,'  by  B.  Seebohm  Rowntree,  in  The 
Contemporary  Review,  October  1911. 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    275 

the  solution  of  this  most  complicated  problem 
is  going  to  involve  far  more  than  a  mere  po- 
litical programme.  The  truth  is  the  world 
cannot  be  saved  by  either  its  parliamentary 
legislators  or  its  social  experts.  It  must  be 
saved  by  itself.  This  is  the  thought  which  is 
becoming  more  and  more  clear.  It  means  that 
the  deepest  need  towards  the  attainment  of  a 
new  earth  is  what  the  distinguished  social  edu- 
cationalists whom  I  named  a  moment  ago — 
and  who  make  up,  if  I  may  say  so,  perhaps 
the  most  intelligent  intellectual  partnership  at 
present  working  in  England — called  recently 
'a  change  of  heart.'1  There  must  be  this  alike 
in  those  by  whom  the  problem  is  to  be  solved 
and  those  for  whom,  more  immediately,  it  is 
to  be  solved.  With  the  former,  there  must  be 
the  development  of  a  new  idea  and  principle — 
a  moral  and  social  motive  in  place  of  a  material 
and  selfish  one;  with  the  latter,  there  must  be — 
along  with  better  houses,  higher  wages,  more 
time  free  from  labour — also  character  and  a 

1 'What  is  Socialism?     A  Change  of  Heart,'  by  Sidney  and 
Beatrice  Webb,  in  The  New  Statesman,  19th  April  1913. 


276  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

new  ideal  of  life.  Without  this  'change  of 
heart' — which  obviously  is  not  legislative  but 
personal — neither  will  men  be  constrained  to 
do  what  is  right  to  the  down-trodden  sections 
of  society,  nor,  if  it  were  done,  would  it  effect 
a  permanent  good.  Thus  is  it  that  social  re- 
generation is  a  moral  and  personal  even  more 
than — or,  at  the  lowest,  as  well  as — a  political 
problem.  It  will  be  accomplished,  says  Mr. 
Philip  Snowden,  not  by  a  revolution,  but  by 
a  co-operation  of  'men  and  women  of  all  classes 
whose  moral  senses  have  been  developed.'1 
Till  something  of  this  kind  permeates  heart  and 
mind  and  conscience,  the  promised  land  is  still 
afar  off.  No  one  sees  this  more  clearly  than 
Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  who,  whatever  one  may  think 
of  his  influence  or  of  his  qualifications  to  be 
a  guide  of  the  moral  life  either  of  individuals 
or  of  society,  is  certainly  a  man  who  can  think. 
He  too  speaks  of  'the  great  Change;'  and  this 
is  'no  mere  change  in  conditions  and  institu- 
tions' but  'a  change  of  heart  and  mind.'2    And 

1  In  The  Christian  Commonwealth,  20th  September  191 1. 

2  In  the  Comet's  Tail,  p.  303. 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    277 

he  twits  the  programmists  who  have  schemes 
for  socialistic  regeneration  by  asking  if  their 
'aunts'  or  the  'grocer'  or  the  'family  solicitor' 
can  be  counted  upon  for  support.1  That  is  to 
say,  he  sees  the  problem  is  not  in  programmes 
but  in  persons — is,  in  a  word,  in  ourselves. 
This,  of  course,  does  not  mean  that  it  has 
ceased  to  be  political — a  matter  of  laws  and 
administrative  reforms,  of  houses  and  wages 
and  material  improvement  generally.  But  it 
has  ceased  to  be  only  that.  It  is  personal  as 
well  as  political,  moral  as  well  as  material,  an 
affair  of  the  'changed  heart'  as  well  as  the 
amended  statute. 

Now — and  to  come  at  length  to  our  point, 
which  needs  but  a  word  more  to  be  clear — what 
is  all  this  but  just  a  coming  back  to  the  word 
of  Christ,  who  said:  'The  kingdom  of  God  is 
within  you'?  What,  then,  is  going  to  put  it 
within  us — is  going  to  give  men  this  changed 
heart,  this  moral  sense,  this  new  self?  I  find 
the  thinkers  I  have  named  throw  little  or  no 
light  on  this.     The  authors  of  the  article  to 

1  New  W or Ids  for  Old,  p.  225. 


278  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

which  I  referred  on  'The  Changed  Heart'  sug- 
gest merely  the  'ever-widening  adoption  of  the 
socialistic  motive'  through  the  preaching  of  the 
new  Political  Economy.  Mr.  Wells  has  really 
nothing  to  offer;  sometimes  he  thinks  the  'good 
will'  is  to  come  a  long  time  hence,  or  (in  the 
romance  named  a  moment  ago)  lets  his  fancy 
picture  the  'great  Change'  accomplished  magic- 
ally by  the  swish  of  a  comet's  tail,  which  shall 
introduce  a  life  where  war  and  falseness  and 
selfishness  and  ugliness  shall  be  no  more  and 
there  will  be  everywhere  'a  new  world.'  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw  on  one  occasion,  speaking  with 
unwonted  seriousness,  told  the  Labourists  that 
'it  is  only  by  religion  in  the  real  sense  of  the 
word  that  you  can  get  at  people' — something, 
that  is,  which  'gets  a  man  out  of  his  own 
miserable  fears  and  causes  him  to  identify 
himself  with  the  Life-force  of  the  Universe  so 
that  he  feels  his  complete  union  with  the 
human  race;'  but  the  gospel  of  this  religion  is 
apparently  'to  popularize  the  ideal  of  equality' 
— by  which  Mr.  Shaw  says  he  means  to  'dis- 
tribute money  equally' — which  'does  respond,' 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    279 

he  somewhat  strangely  thinks,  'to  a  genuine 
want  in  human  nature'  and  'is  next  to  all  our 
hearts.'1  It  does  not  become  the  believer  in 
Christianity  to  mock  at  the  inadequacy  of  ap- 
peals such  as  these  to  change  the  human  heart; 
these  are  the  best  appeals  men  can  make  since, 
as  it  seems  to  them  as  they  look  at  the  Chris- 
tian world  and  the  Church,  the  appeal  of  the 
gospel  is  practically  inoperative.  Socialists 
would  not  have  turned  to  comets  if  Christians 
had  been  true  to  Christ.  But  it  is  permissible 
to  say  that  any  one,  convinced  about  the  ne- 
cessity of  this  inward  and  personal  renewal  as 
a  factor  in  social  reform,  has  only  to  throw 
off  his  prejudice — unorthodox  persons  can  be 
prejudiced  quite  as  much  as  orthodox — in  order 
to  be  led,  even  if  it  be  past  centuries  of  the 
selfishness  and  sinfulness  of  so-called  Chris- 
tians, straight  to  Jesus  Christ.  I  shall  not  here 
reopen  an  argument  about  Christ:  I  shall  only 
say  to  look  at  Him  and  learn  of  Him,  and 
above  all  live  with  Him,  mean  a  new  heart  and 

1  Reported  in  The  Labour  Leader,  28th  April  191 1.    This  is 
a  worthier  Shaw  than  that  referred  to  in  Chapter  VI. 
19 


28o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

a  new  motive  and  a  new  self  as  nothing  else  in 
the  world  does.  And  this  means  that  the  Chris- 
tian gospel — while  it  does  not  offer  the  solution 
of  the  social  problem,  which  will  still  demand 
all  the  energies  of  political  reason — is  yet  in- 
dispensable to  the  solution  of  it;  and  that  Jesus 
Christ,  from  whom  (as  I  said  on  an  earlier 
page)  the  whole  question  really  took  its  origin, 
is  still  the  essential  living  factor  in  it. 

The  bearing  of  this  on  the  often  debated 
question  of  the  duty  of  the  Church  towards  the 
social  problem  is  immediate ;  but  it  is  not  within 
the  purpose  of  our  present  discussions  to  exhort 
upon  that,  and,  moreover,  I  must  now  pass  on. 

I  pass  to  the  second  specific  question  which 
was  named — the  woman's  movement.  If  I 
touch  on  this  more  briefly  and  only  at  one  point, 
it  is  from  considerations  of  space,  and  certainly 
not  from  any  want  of  the  due  sense  of  the  im- 
portance of  the  issues  involved;  on  the  con- 
trary, I  believe  that  here  is  something  at  once 
deeper  in  its  principles  and  more  far-reaching 
in  its  consequences  than  any  other  movement 
(except  the  gospel  itself)   before  the  civilised 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    281 

world.  Of  course,  when  I  say  this  I  am  not 
thinking  of  the  agitation  for  the  suffrage;  that 
is  an  arguable  implicate  of  the  wider  idea,  upon 
which  the  political  reason  will  adjudicate  ac- 
cording to  whether  it  is  or  is  not  convinced  that 
it  will  be  for  the  welfare  of  the  state.  These 
pages  are  certainly  not  the  place  for  the  writer 
to  inflict  his  views  on  this  question  upon  the 
reader.  By  the  woman's  movement  I  mean 
something  far  greater  than  any  mere  franchise. 
I  meant  the  idea — which  indubitably  is  perme- 
ating the  mental,  moral,  and  social  atmosphere 
of  the  times  in  which  we  are  living — of  the  new 
sense  of  equality  between  men  and  women. 
The  term  'sex-equality'  is  capable  of  misuse,  but 
I  mean  it  here  in  its  true  sense.  It  does  not, 
of  course,  mean  that  there  are  not  natural 
differences  between  men  and  women  which  will 
always  be,  and  which,  moreover,  will  always 
involve  differences  in  political  and  also  in  per- 
sonal relations.  And  it  does  not  mean  anything 
so  foolish  as  that  men  and  women  are  equal  in 
everything;  there  are  some  things  men  will 
always  do  better  than  women,  just  as  there  are 


282  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

others  women  will  always  do  better  than  men. 
Nor  does  it  mean  anything  so  abhorrent  as  a 
sex-rivalry  or  sex-war.  It  means,  on  the  con- 
trary, something  common  to  both — the  human- 
ity common  to  both;  and  therefore  that  a 
woman,  equally  with  a  man,  has  the  full  rights 
and  also  responsibilities  of  that  humanity. 
Thus,  woman's  life  at  its  best  is  complementary 
to  man's  just  as  man's  at  its  best  is  comple- 
mentary to  woman's;  but  also,  in  her  case  as 
in  his,  life  is  more  than  this,  and  she  has  the 
right  to  be  herself  as  he  has  to  be  himself. 
Again,  the  contribution  which  women  can  make 
to  the  common  work  and  welfare  of  the  world 
will  be  most  successful  when  it  is  in  co-operation 
with  that  of  man,  just  as  man's  will  be  when 
it  is  in  co-operation  with  that  of  women  (and 
has  often  failed  from  lack  of  this)  ;  but  she, 
as  well  as  he,  has  a  responsibility  which  is  direct 
and  is  not  limited  by  what  may  be  appended 
to  the  other's.  This  I  take  to  be  the  root-idea 
of  the  woman's  movement.  It  is  with  us  to-day, 
and  will  be  with  us  more  and  more,  profoundly 
influencing  the  whole  life  of  civilisation.    I  have 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY   28 


j 


already  pointed  out  the  connection  between  the 
gospel  and  the  origin  of  any  such  ideas.  We 
have  now  to  ask  if,  in  any  vital  sense,  the  gospel 
is  indispensable  in  the  application  of  them  in 
our  own  times. 

As  I  have  said,  I  am  going  to  touch  on  only 
one  point.  It  by  no  means  exhausts  the  subject, 
but  it  is  what  we  want — a  crucial  test-case; 
moreover,  what  is  essential  to  be  said  upon  it 
can  be  said  in  not  many  sentences.  There  is 
nothing  which  this  new  relation  between  men 
and  women,  looking  at  each  other  with  eyes 
level,  will  more  surely  affect,  and  nothing  by 
which  its  results  will  more  severely  be  tested, 
than  the  standard  of  morality  between  the 
sexes.  Just  because  it  is  essentially  the  claim 
of  personality,  it  cannot  but  express  itself  in 
this  connection;  and  just  because  it  is  a  claim 
for  equality  in  personality,  it  cannot  and  will 
not  accept  the  dual  standard — one  for  man  and 
another  for  woman — at  present  generally  rec- 
ognised. Whatever  else  it  may  or  may  not 
do,  the  idea  of  sex-equality  (in  the  sense  ex- 
plained a  moment  ago)   will — not,  of  course, 


284  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

suddenly  or  immediately,  but  surely  and  gradu- 
ally —  make  these  two  codes  approximate. 
Obviously  this  may  result  in  either  of  two 
directions.  It  may  mean  that  women  will  more 
and  more  claim  the  licence  of  the  laxer  stand- 
ard now  widely  tolerated  in  men;  or  it  may 
mean  that  the  higher  standard,  now  demanded 
of  women,  will  more  and  more  be  also  and 
equally  demanded  of  men.  The  former  alter- 
native I  do  not  discuss  because  it  is  something 
to  be,  wherever  it  appears,  not  discussed  but 
simply  fought;  the  one  remark  I  make  in  pass- 
ing from  it  is  that,  in  any  section  of  society 
which  descends  to  it,  it  is  women  who  will  have 
to  pay  the  price.  But  assuming  the  other  alter- 
native, I  wish  to  press  the  question  of  how  this 
is  to  be  maintained  otherwise  than  with  the 
Christian  ideal  and  the  Christian  law.  I  cannot 
see  that  any  merely  naturalistic  and  utilitarian 
principle  of  ethic  will  maintain  it — not  to  say, 
with  any  power  enforce  it.  For  naturalism, 
which  is  with  Christianity  as  regards  such 
things  as  justice  or  truth,  or  even,  to  some  ex- 
tent,   benevolence,    is    not    clearly    with    it    as 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY   285 

regards  the  equal  obligation  of  purity  upon  man 
as  upon  woman.  From  the  point  of  view  solely 
of  natural  consequences  to  the  individual,  the 
family,  and  the  state,  this  obligation  may  be 
broken  by  a  man  with  a  degree  of  impunity 
which,  for  obvious  reasons,  does  not  apply  to 
a  woman.  It  is  just  this  fact  which  the  natural 
man  has  fastened  on  to  his  own  mean  advan- 
tage, and  because  of  it,  defenders  (whom  I 
shall  not  here  quote)  of  that  dual  ethical  code 
to  which  reference  has  been  made  can,  from  the 
purely  utilitarian  standpoint,  make  a  case,  as 
a  case  can  be  made  from  the  wrong  point  of 
view  for  any  wrong  thing.  Therefore,  I  ask 
again,  how,  apart  from  Christianity,  with  its 
commanding  principle  on  this  matter  and  its 
constraining  power,  are  you  going  to  maintain 
the  higher  equal  law  of  purity?  There  are, 
of  course,  very  many  non-Christians  who  them- 
selves are  true  to  it,  but  this  is  individual  prac- 
tice. I  do  not  find  that  our  modern  non- 
Christian  authors,  especially  in  fiction — and  I 
am  thinking  not  of  the  baser  kind — lay  it  down 
as  a  law.    Only  Jesus  Christ  is  the  law  of  this. 


286  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

By  this  I  mean  no  merely  ecclesiastical  or  the- 
ological canon  or  dogma.  I  mean  that  when 
Jesus  Christ  is  brought  into  any  human  life — 
whether  the  life  of  a  man  or  of  a  woman  makes 
not  the  least  difference — then  only  one  principle 
is  here  possible.  That  is  what  I  mean  when  I 
say  that  Christ  is  a  law  in  this  matter,  and  He 
is  the  only  law  in  it.  I  shall  not  pursue  this 
subject  further,  though  I  need  make  no  apology 
for  having  touched  on  it,  for  it  is  vital  both  in 
the  woman's  movement  and  for  the  social 
future  generally.  But  I  think  enough  has  been 
said  or  indicated  to  make  clear  the  point  for 
our  present  purpose,  which  is  that  in  this  vital 
issue,  which  must  develop  in  one  direction  or 
the  other  out  of  the  idea  of  the  equal  person- 
ality of  the  sexes,  the  Christian  law  and  ideal, 
far  from  being  obsolete  and  useless,  are,  on 
the  contrary,  indispensable  if  the  inevitable 
future  approximation  of  these  two  standards 
of  morality  is  to  mean  not  a  levelling  down  but 
a  levelling  up,  and  is  to  be  the  vindication  and 
the  victory  not  of  the  lower  but  of  the  higher 
law  of  life. 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY   287 

This,  then,  is  the  conclusion  which  I  think 
we  may  reach  regarding  the  permanence  of  the 
value  of  the  Christian  message  for  our  day  as 
tested  by  the  two  specific  problems  which  have 
been  briefly  discussed.  The  conclusion  is  not 
that  the  Christian  gospel  is  of  itself  the  solu- 
tion of  these  problems,  which  in  many  respects 
remain  problems  to  be  worked  out  by  what  I 
have  called  the  political  reason,  and  God  has 
not  given  us  the  gospel  to  save  us  the  trouble 
of  using  our  reason.  But  it  is  that  the  gospel 
is  an  indispensable  element  in  their  solution. 
To  put  it  even  more  simply,  these  problems 
need  Jesus  Christ.  These  'questions  of  the  day' 
— of  this  late  twentieth  century — cannot  be 
truly  answered  apart  from  Him. 

Now  if  this  be  true,  it  is  but  the  exemplifica- 
tion in  two  typical  instances  of  a  greater  general 
truth  with  which  I  shall  now  draw  this  chapter 
and,  with  it,  the  book  towards  an  end. 

If  these  questions  need  Christ,  so  does  the 
world.  This  is  to  be  said  of  the  present  age 
with  very  special  cogency.  The  world  to-day  is 
changing    in    a    way   which    is    making   many 


288  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

thoughtful  men — and  among  them  even  those 
who  have  no  strong  personal  need  of  Jesus 
Christ — realise  that  momentous  issues  for  man- 
kind are  involved  in  the  place  which  Chris- 
tianity may  hold  in  the  world  of  to-morrow. 
I  have  space  to  mention  but  one  aspect  of  this. 
The  wo/ld  is  becoming  unified.  It  is  not  merely 
that  its  territory  is  practically  all  discovered 
and  delimited,  but — what  is  much  more  impor- 
tant— it  is  being  knit  into  an  interrelated  whole 
through,  chiefly,  the  dual  factors  of  education 
and  commerce.  Nowhere  is  the  effect  of  this 
more  profound  than  in  the  far  Orient,  where 
great  nations  are  passing  with  extraordinary 
rapidity  through  a  tremendous  transformation. 
It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  all  the  potent 
forces  which  in  our  European  history  operated 
singly  and  with  long  intervals  between  them 
under  such  names  as  the  Renaissance,  the  Ref- 
ormation, the  Revolution,  the  Social  Move- 
ment, the  Educational  Enlightenment,  and 
others,  are  to-day  operating  all  at  once  in 
India  and  China  and  Japan.  Amid  the  vast  and 
varied    consequences    of    this,    the    effect    on 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY   289 

religion  is  inevitable  and  will  be  profound. 
Polytheism  and  ancestor-worship  have  no  fu- 
ture in  this  new  era.  The  prospect  therefore  is 
imminent  of  the  opening  of  the  sluice-gates  for 
the  flooding  of  the  world  with  great  material- 
istic civilisations  which  have  discarded  the  re- 
straints and  reverences  of  their  old  faiths,  and 
have  found  no  other  instead.  The  only  alterna- 
tive presented  to  these  nations  is  the  name  of 
Jesus  Christ.  It  is  thus  that  not  only  particular 
questions  need  Christ:  it  is  the  world  which 
needs  Him.  In  the  most  unexpected  quarters 
indications  appear  of  how  men  feel  this  to-day 
about  the  future  of  the  world,  even  when  (as 
I  have  said)  they  may  not  feel  it  in  their  own 
personal  life;  the  last  indication  of  it  is  the 
recent  call  of  the  new  Republic  of  China  for 
the  prayers  of  its  Christian  people.1    From  all 

1  This  remarkable  action  is  not  to  be  represented  as  meaning 
more  than  it  does  mean.  But  it  means  at  least  a  sense  that 
Christianity  is  an  element  in  the  national  life  which  may  have 
something  vital  or  valuable  for  the  nation  at  its  period  of 
crisis.  Not  dissimilarly,  exactly  sixteen  hundred  years  ago, 
Constantine  turned  the  eyes  of  the  pagan  Roman  empire  to 
Christianity,  not  so  much  out  of  his  own  personal  faith  ai 
with  the  feeling  that  this  religion  was  the  coming  thing,  and 
the  hope  of  the  future  lay  in  it. 


29o  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

this,  and  from  the  facts  which  give  rise  to  it 
— into  which  I  cannot  now  further  enter — I 
draw  but  two  thoughts,  one  about  the  world 
and  one  about  the  Church,  and  so  close. 

About  the  world,  it  suggests  the  thought  that 
the  real  hope  of  progress  is  bound  up  with  Jesus 
Christ.  Progress  is  an  idea  which  the  modern 
mind — exhilarated,  as  I  have  already  in  this 
chapter  suggested,  by  the  strong  wine  of  evo- 
lution— is  apt  to  assume  too  easily,  as  if  it 
were  an  axiom  of  life  and  history  which  is  the 
pledge  of  a  glorious  future.  This  is  not  a  very 
far-seeing  or  accurate  view.  In  the  first  place, 
evolution  as  a  secular  process  has  its  terrible 
as  well  as  its  inspiring  aspect.  The  disillusion- 
ing pen  of  Anatole  France  reminds  us  that  'the 
human  race  is  not  capable  of  an  indeterminate 
progress,'  and  that  some  day  'when  the  sun  goes 
out — a  catastrophe  that  is  bound  to  be' — 'the 
globe  will  go  rolling  on,  bearing  with  it  through 
the  silent  fields  of  space  the  ashes  of  human- 
ity.'1 But  if  this  despairing  future  seems  too 
distant  to  impress  the  mind,  let  us  test  the  idea 

1  Le  Jardin  d'Epicure,  E.  T.,  by  Alfred  Allinson,  pp.  26-7. 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    291 

of  human  progress  within  the  narrower  area  of 
history.  Undoubtedly  there  has  been  in  human 
history  an  immense  advance  in  some  things. 
Of  these  I  will  name,  as  perhaps  the  chief,  these 
two — knowledge  and  comfort.  The  progress 
of  knowledge  is  such  that  a  schoolboy  to-day 
knows  things  which  were  hid  from  Aristotle : 
the  progress  in  comfort  is  hardly  less,  and  the 
necessities  of  the  people  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury are  the  unheard-of  luxuries  of  the  most 
wealthy  of  past  ages.  In  these  respects,  this 
day — of  books  and  schools,  of  telephones  and 
motor-cars — is  incomparably  in  advance  of 
days  gone  by.  But  neither  comfort  nor  even 
mere  knowledge  is  the  deepest  thing  in  life. 
Let  us  test  the  idea  of  progress  by  two  deeper 
things.  The  two  most  real  tests  of  life  are, 
I  imagine,  happiness  and  character.  If,  then, 
we  look  at  the  evolution  of  human  history — 
apart,  so  far  as  this  is  possible,  from  the  law 
and  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ — do  we  find  a  real 
and  certain  progress  in  these  things?  I  greatly 
doubt  it.  I  do  not  find  the  non-Christian 
product  of  twentieth  century  civilisation  a  hap- 


292  THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 

pier  thing  than  some  old  Greek  who  lived  in 
Athens  in  the  days  of  Pericles  or,  in  some 
quieter  spot  of  Hellas,  tended  his  herds  and 
saw  the  sunlight  on  the  violet  sea.  As  regards 
character,  a  man  who  to-day  casts  off  the  re- 
straints of  the  higher  morality  is  easily,  and 
indeed  is  essentially,  a  worse  man  than  any 
example  of  lust  or  cruelty  in  the  days  of  pagan 
Rome,  and  certainly  merits  a  deeper  damna- 
tion. In  a  word  I  do  not  find  that  life  and 
history,  apart  from  Jesus  Christ,  assure  any 
great  happiness  or  any  high  ethical  elevation 
for  mankind.  M.  France — in  the  work  from 
which  I  quoted  a  moment  ago — summons,  as 
the  two  truest  judges  on  human  life,  Irony 
and  Pity.  And  indeed  it  is  true :  these  are  the 
two  thoughts  which  the  human  spectacle  leaves 
in  the  observant  mind.  But  this  is  the  human 
spectacle  as  viewed  by  one  who  has  never  recog- 
nised its  Divine  Hero.  When  with  human  life 
and  human  history  is  linked  Jesus  Christ  and 
something  of  what  we  have  found  Jesus  Christ 
to  be  and  to  mean  for  man  and  for  the  world, 
then  and  then  only  does  the  pity  deepen  into 
sacrificing  and  saving  love,   and  the   irony  is 


THE  COMMENT  OF  TO-DAY    293 

transfigured  into  faith  and  hope.  It  is  He  that 
is  the  star  of  human  destiny;  and  better  than 
any  evolutionary  law — in  part  terrible  and  in 
part  dubious — and  its  pledge  of  progress  is 
He  who  is  the  Light  of  the  world  which  shall 
never  set. 

The  other  thought  suggested  by  what  has 
been  said  applies  more  particularly  to  the 
Church.  The  Church  of  to-day  often  bewails 
the  spiritual  flatness  of  the  age,  and  its  indiffer- 
ence to  religion.  I  am  not  disposed  to  accept 
all  such  strictures  on  the  irreligion  of  this  age 
without  qualifications,  partly  because  any  one 
who  reads  religious  history  and  biography 
knows  how  such  things  are  said  of  many  ages, 
and  partly  because  I  would  judge  the  religion 
of  an  age,  as  I  would  that  of  a  man,  by  the 
state  of  the  conscience,  and  I  think  the  con- 
science of  the  present  time  is  indisputably 
awake  as  that  of  many  an  age — even  more 
orthodox — in  the  past  was  not.  Still,  that 
there  is  a  flatness  in  the  religious  life  of  the 
Church  to-day  is  only  too  evident.  Now,  in 
past  times,  deliverance  from  such  times  of  flat- 
ness has  come  to  the  Church  through  great  re- 


294 


THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE 


vivals  of  personal  religion,  when  the  souls  of 
men  were  stirred  to  cry  out  'What  must  I  do 
to  be  saved?'  For  this  revival  many  seek  the 
signs;  many  would  even  manufacture  its  ap- 
pearing. But  the  wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth, 
and  the  breath  of  this  spiritual  revival  does  not 
come.  May  the  reason  be  this?  We  ask  God 
to  speak  to  the  age.  Was  there  ever  an  age 
in  history  when  more  distinctly  God  was  speak- 
ing? He  is  speaking  to  the  Church  to-day — 
so  that,  as  I  have  indicated,  even  the  world  can 
hear  it — in  the  great  problems  of  the  social  cry 
for  justice  and  in  the  great  need  of  the  heathen 
world  for  Christ.  That  is  God's  voice  as  really 
and  as  surely  as  any  conviction  of  guilt  in  the 
soul  of  an  awakened  sinner.  May  it  not  be 
that  only  as  the  Church  hears  these  calls  of  God 
will  His  Spirit  again  descend  upon  her  with 
power  and  blessing?  The  revival  awaiting  the 
Church  may  be  one  in  which  men  shall  turn 
again  to  Christ,  saying  not  only — though  this 
will  ever  be  with  the  other — that  He  and  He 
only  is  the  Saviour  of  their  souls,  but  that  He 
and  He  only  is  the  Saviour  of  the  world. 


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